First, the track listing for "Current Resident," which was included originally but somehow did not post after I made some formatting changes. I'm struggling with the formatting on this sucka.
Side A
1. Harry Slash and the Slashtones – Extreme Theme
2. Heavenly – P.U.N.K. Girl
3. Superchunk – Down the Hall
4. Poole – Mary Shakes Her Hair
5. Quasi – The Skeleton
6. Mötörhead – Tear Ya’ Down
7. Handsome Boy Modeling School Feat. Brand Nubian – Once Again (Here To Kick One For You)
8. Echo and the Bunnymen – Do It Clean
9. The Promise Ring – B is For Bethlehem
10. Busy Toby – Me, My Drums, and You
11. Sebadoh – Weird
12. The Lilys – Who Is Moving
13. The Weirdos – Fallout
14. Belle and Sebastian – Dirty Dream Number Two
15. The Jesus and Mary Chain – My Little Underground
16. Idlewild – Everyone Says You’re Fragile
Side B
1. Small Factory – The Last Time That We Talkes
2. Unrest – Makeout Club
3. Green Day – Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?
4. The Karl Hendricks Trio – A Letter From the Coach
5. The Rolling Stones – Rocks Off
6. Talulah Gosh – The Girl With the Strawberry Hair
7. The Magnetic Fields – The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing
8. The Revelers – Detroit Bridge (Summertime)
9. The Rondelles – I Melt With You
10. The Lemonheads Feat. Belinda Carlisle – I’ll Do It Anyway
11. Holly and The Italians – Tell That Girl To Shut Up
12. The Gravediggaz – Pit Of Snakes
13. Sloan – All By Ourselves
14. Heavenly – Space Manatee
15. The Magnetic Fields – Punk Love
Second: Fuck twee.net and their retconning. We legitimately stole that election.
Third: I'm in total agreement on the issue with transitions, CD-Rs, and now MP3 CDs. The Gravediggaz-to-Sloan movement is mix tape genius; Maybe the best in Tom's history.
And in a final pre-defense note, between "Hope Is Important" (which I don't own) and "The Remote Part" (which I do) was "100 Broken Windows." "Remote" has the two best songs Idlewild ever did, but as a whole kinda sucks. "Windows" is much more consistent and I can actually listen to it front to back.
As for "Pirate's Life," I'm surprised Tom has such a good opinion of it. I don't want to judge my 18 year-old self too harshly since it was kind of an awkward era for me musically1, but it looks like a few hits surrounded by too much filler. Outside of "In Pursuit," "Classics of Love," and "Next In Line," even the great bands on here aren't represented by what I would consider an essential track. "French Guy?" Really? That's what I felt was a good enough RFTC song that it NEEDED to be on here? I guess I would consider "These Two Boots of Mine" to be "essential" Bruisers, but that might imply that such a thing exists.2
I have a theory about The Parasites: there is no person on this planet who considers The Parasites their favorite band. No one. For years I've been trying to think of another band who had some level of national attention in a national scene that I can say the same thing about. I haven't been able to think of any. "Fool For You" is a very, very good pop song (maybe essential Parasites), but I don't believe it ever turned anyone into a Parasites fanatic. They were the ultimate pop-punk also-rans of the '90's scene. They even released one of those Ramones cover albums that were all the rage, but since more premiere bands3 got the chance first, they ended up doing "It's Alive." In other words, they got to do a live set of the Ramones' greatest hits. Here, Parasites, have your pop-punk consolation prize.4
This all ties in with Tom's Lillingtons comments. "Death By Television" is next to "Leave Home" and "My Brain Hurts" as the absolute of the genre. And it really is difficult to explain why any one of the songs on that album could turn me into a Lillingtons freak but the Parasites' best song will never convince me they're worth much of my time. It's that intangible urgency that's level beyond the 3 chords and snotty vocals.
Tom is also completely fucking wrong about Teenage Bottlerocket and later Lillingtons albums. "The Too Late Show" is only a half-step below "DBT" and light-years above any Bottlerocket stuff.5 I think I was smitten by Bottlerocket live the first time because it was probably the first punk show I had been to in a year or more. It also helped that it was a small but extremely excited crowd. When I saw them 6 months later, they had somehow taken the crown as the biggest pop-punk band in the world. The Copyrights were actually being booed (despite being wayyyy better) before Bottlerocket took the stage and proceeded to bore the shit out of me. Leaving before their set was done, I told my buddy Whoot that our experience that night had to be similar to those Weasel fans who were so pumped to see The Riverdales the first time and having to deal with the disappointment that ensued.
1 I was still grasping for new punk, and bands like the Arrivals and Lillingtons showed up. But overall, I guess I was trying to "grow" and find something new. Based on the tracks here, this was dead-center between my Screeching Weasel-worship and my RFTC-worship. (I still worship both.) Oddly enough, the Lillingtons and Vindictives put out my two fave albums around this time.
2 The Bruisers broke up when Dropkick stole Al Barr, their lead singer. Dropkick stopped being good at that time and managed to break up a band that I kinda liked a lot at the time. Side note: despite his Boston-tough-punk attitude, Al Barr is about 5' tall and I'm pretty sure our 12 year-old niece Claire could take him in a fight. And as long as we're talking punk and the surprising body-types of lead singers, Ben Weasel is fucking ripped. Or at least he was the last time I saw him live about 7 years ago.
3 Like Boris The Sprinkler.
4 Yes, I own this. I played it once after buying around '99-ish and have only bothered to go through it once more since.
5 Exception: "Stupid Games" off of "Total." Maybe Cody's finest song... Jesus Christ do I know a lot about pop-punk. Thanks, Tom.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
In Defense of "Current Resident"
Insane Records lives! Sorta. Less Quality and Cheaper forever.
The Twee List pulled a retcon on y'all, too. Sorry, Dan - I see a lot of the people you were spamming and they never bring up Go Bananas!. (Maybe they don't know that I own the only copy of "I'll Jack You in the Back of the Head" in NYC. . .)
Dude, fix that misused "it's" in paragraph 3. The ultimate peeve.
So. My tape. Just because I half-assed the j-card, you omit the tracklist? C'moonnnnn. In any case, this came during my Minneapolis stint though based on what Dan's commenting on, the shoegaze/nu-gaze period I went through while I was up north didn't reflect on what I was putting on Dan's mixes.
"Tell that Girl to Shut Up" actually came out in the late 70's and I stole this little stunner off of one of the legendary Rhino Records DIY comps.1 That makes this power pop (not indie/twee pop) and I get the feeling that this song, like a lot of power pop tunes from that era, probably blew every motherfucker in the room through the back wall when Holly et al played it live, but was recorded in the same sorta lukewarm way that ruined a lot of other great PP tunes. (Seriously, find a Shoes live recording and listen to those songs just fly out. . .) Fuck it, I think this song has balls to spare, and it's gonna be stuck in my head the rest of the week.
And c'mon. . . hooks make it possible for total morons to write "Louie Louie" and change the world. They're totally the ends/means/alpha/omega amen. Our favorite guy ever Andrew WK writes the stupidest/hookiest songs ever, and the only reason they sound urgent is that they ARE catchy and loud and fast but the urgency is sorta. . . mystifying. Corollas write songs just as good as ambulances, man.
"A Letter to the Coach" is. . . Karl Hendricks Trio (on S'chunk's label). In retrospect not that great, but that's a killer riff. Their records tended to be pretty dull, though. And for fuck's sake, did I really put a Promise Ring song on yr mix? You better tell 2000 Tom I'm gonna beat him up. (See? Catchy!) What the fuck was I thinking? Oh wait. That song's pretty tight.
Idlewild is kind of a frustrating case - great tunes, great live act, great taste (covered "Everything Flows" on an EP!), great B-sides - but the dude's (Roddy Woomble - best name ever) lyrics often fall over their clumsy pretension. This song is off their "Hope is Important" record - an early record with sorta goofy Dischord bits in it. Also, one of those bands who got hyped before they should have, got signed when the labels were falling apart, and then was stuck in that awkward corporate "middle" between being a real major label band and being a semi-popular indie rock band. Eh, I guess they did just fine in the UK. The follow-up to this record ("The Remote Part") is pretty great.
About a month ago I was trudging to the train across an empty, wide intersection on the business end of a late Saturday night's beers and some bike punk rode by singing Small Factory's "If You Hurt Me" and it was so perfect and beautiful that I shouted the next lyric down the street as he rode by. Phoebe fuckin' Summersquash.
I'm not sure how Dan and I can talk about music so much and he's relatively unfamiliar with Sloan, a band I've been obsessed with since, yikes, probably just about the beginning. Well, the "Smeared" record. . . which means over half of my life. Eeep. Anyway, Dan, I highly recommend starting with "Navy Blues" as it's probably more your speed, and then work away from that to the two adjacent records ("One Chord to Another" and "Between the Bridges"), and so on, though their last two full-lengths have been spotty at best. "Twice Removed" is by FAR their best release, and apparently a lot of Canadians think so too. In general, it was sorta depressing to see the band get all up in their rock asses and stop writing songs that had more meaning and heart versus great pants and cool stage kicks, but all in all one of my favorite bands ever.
C'mon, I like to pride myself on my transitions - or at the very least, trying not to put songs that sound like each other next to each other. One of the nicer things about CDRs is that this is a LOT easier. . . but yeah, where's the romance?
Speaking of things that I was obsessed with in 2000, check out Buffy and The Rock in Southland Tales. The best and worst movie I've seen in forever. Deserves a special award for making Jon Lovitz a crooked badass cop. Also I think I like a Killers song now.
Saxophones have a place in rock. This is the best song ever written.
1 Now out of print and EXPENSIVE on eBay, probably because they meant as many to others as they did to me, despite their prevalence in the average Wal-Mart's 1.99 bin).
Yo-ho-ho, I Pirate's Life For Me (Dan, 1999)
Let's hear it for four-month hiatus-in'. Um, I’ll be better?
This gem comes to us via 1999, and I'm wondering if Dan possibly made this for me as a graduation present (as he and my family came to Tallahassee to see me walk) or if he made this after he'd started school in Champaign. Hm.
Anyway, this one's definitely more my jam that the last tape I reviewed, primarily because the fake ska is kept to a minimum, the pop-punk features high in the mix, and again, we're looking at some serious hits. The cover art's pretty minimal in comparison, and I'm not sure if "I Pirate" (vs. "A Pirate") is a typo.
Seriously, though, this might be the Golden Tape of Dan's because before this there was a lot of skapunk bullshit and once Dan got to college, he grew into more hardcore and metal - which means that he went from liking a lot of people playing their instruments well, to worthwhile music, to more guys playing their instruments really well. Anyway, this tape has a lot of songs I wouldn't have heard from any of my other sources, is catchy as hell, and I get the sense that Dan kind of knew what I wanted at this point. Cheap heat!
Dan loooovvveessss the Vindictives and the Nobodys and I've come around (a little, anyway) but at the time, I just couldn't stomach them - didn't see what made them decent, but that distaste might be an aftereffect of the balls-shriveling nightmare voices of JJ Nobody & Joey Vindictive.
On that note, I was in a circle pit at a Tullycraft show a few months back (um, really!) and based on how fast and fun Tully's songs are (though I've never been a HUGE fan of theirs), I'm often curious how some bands/songs get to be "pop-punk" and some don't seemingly only because of the singer's voice: note that the bassline of the Swingin' Utters "Next in Line" (a sorta gritty sad song from this tape) seems really close to "Josie" by Tullycraft but because Sean Tully sings in a funny cute nasally voice and pop-punk voices are supposed to be a) loud b) gritty c) British d) annoying e) unintelligible or hell, I dunno, Tully’s for wimps. What the hell. Conversely, I bet most tweepop kids probably own at least one MTX single but nobody calls those twee-pop kids "jocks".
Anyway. . .
The good:
- So many good pop punk songs. A song about Zero Bars (which was, for a time, my fave candy bar). (Now my favorite candy bar is cheese corn. Fuck candy bars.) Teen Idols! Pretty much all good reasons to stay in yr car two
- Two incredible Lillingtons songs! Easily my favorite pop-punk band of the 90's-00's, and of all the bands Dan scooped me on, they're the best. I know it's formula and I think most of my friends might not understand what makes them better than other soundalike bands, but their early stuff has this real heart to it, this simple, wide-eyed wistfulness that permeates even through the silly/stupid lyrics. While 1999's "Death by Television" is pretty much considered a punk-pop classic, and I love it beyond death, ultimately songs about UFO's and monsters and Rambo are always going to be trumped by songs about being in love with a girl at your high school. (Which is why Teenage Bottlerocket's records are better than the last two Lillingtons records.) http://www.teenagebottlerocket.com (Thanks to this post, I now know what I’m doing next Thursday…)
- LTJ are apparently still around. Really. What the fuck do those guys look like now?
- Discount - This song rules (and I believe I gave this CD to Dan for a birthday present) and reminded me of something that angered me not long ago: I read an interview with Alison Discount (now "VV" of The Kills) and now she says she's from London, probably because she's embarrased to be from Florida. Which is bullshit - Florida is 100% the punkest state in the Union.
- You know, I'm glad the Clash tried to be a dubby reggae band, but boy, did they suck at it. "Crooked Beat" is just such a bad idea - soulless and sort of lazy. It's not that I claim to be an expert on reggae or dub (or really anything else) and I know the Clash were hardcore fans of the stuff and really helped if find an audience, but why did they do this? Ugh. Recently saw a documentary about Lee "Scratch" Perry - there's a funny scene where he claims that he "fixed" the Clash. There’s also a pretty funny scene where you can’t tell what in Jah’s holy name he’s talking about. . . turns out that’s pretty much the whole movie. Anyway, pretty amazing doc.
All said and done, some quality mixin’ from a quality guy, who just got lazers shot right through his eye. (Yarrr.)
- The Vindictives - In Pursuit
- Common Rider - Classics of Love
- The Orphans - The Government Stole my Germs CD
- The Lillingtons - For the Fun of It
- Bouncing Souls - Undeniable
- Teen Idols - 20 Below
- The Clash - Crooked Beat
- Swingin' Utters - Net in Line
- The Pietasters - Yesterday's Over
- The Parasites - Fool for You
- Jud Jud - Bass at the Beginning Song
- Screeching Weasel - High Ambitions
- Moral Crux - Breakdown
- The Business - Get Out of My House
- The Groovie Ghoulies - I Don't Like Mondays
- Rocket from the Crypt - French Guy
- Beatnik Termites - Undesirable
- The Descendents - Pervert
Side B
- Less Than Jake - Anchor
- Discount - Lights Out
- The Bruisers - These Two Boots of Mine
- The Go-Go's - Tonite
- Swingin' Utters - London Drunk
- The Stubborn All-Stars - Lose this Skin
- Anal Cunt - Your Kid is Deformed
- Rancid - Idle Hands
- Screeching Weasel - You'll Be in My Dreams
- The Belmont Playboys - Hang All Over You (live)
- The Bouncing Souls - Argyle (live)
- Weezer - Velouria
- The Vindictives - I'm Sick
- The UK Subs - NRA Jingle
- The Lillingtons - Homecoming Queen
- The Clash - Julie's in the Drug Squad
- Sloppy Seconds - Gimme That Zero Bar
- Rancid - Blacklisted
- Nobodys - Joe's Sister
- Mr. T Experience - Semi-OK
- 21. The Vindictives - First One on the Block
- 22. The Groovie Ghoulies - Doin' Fine
Friday, October 3, 2008
“Current Resident” – Tom, 2000
1
Probably didn’t care, either. My little publicity stunt failed to drum up any interest in our partially defunct group. It was around that time that I got handed “Current Resident,” filled with indie-pop, neo-Nuggets, a little punk, and yeah, a little twee.
Listen, I love a good pop song. Prince’s “Kiss,” Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” any of Smashmouth’s singles… There’s a base quality in good pop. When you hear one, every part of your mind will question it, look for it’s faults, dissect it and pull it back together, and try to rationalize what you learned. You, appreciator of the deeper side of music, are above this crap! But that kind of rationale just doesn’t work. There’s nothing to think about and nothing that logic can explain: it just takes that good one hook and you find yourself caught on the wrong end of the reel. A great pop song is a smile from a cute girl and a sweet action movie sequence all in one. It’s a high. So I’m not above shutting off any sense of deeper music appreciation that I might have, turning on the reptilian portion of my brain, and become absorbed in pop music.2 But after years of listening, I’ve noticed that too many indie-pop songs blur in my head. Twee, in all its cuteness, more often than not fails to capture my base instincts like it’s supposed to. Even most pop-punk, another sub-genre based on catchiness, comes off as bland.
Holly and the Italians’ “Tell That Girl To Shut Up” is a good example. It’s all solid indie-pop here: catchy and up-beat with a post-Ramones pop sensibility. The chorus is one, large melodic hook. Female vocals and lyrics indicating some cat fightin’ in the future? Hell yeah! Individual parts of the song work, but as a whole, it’s just bland. Even the chorus doesn’t make a lasting impression. Here one minute, gone the next. There’s something missing.
Urgency.
I’m not talking about the song’s tempo; I’m talking about its ability to convince the listener that right now, you need it. “Tell That Girl to Shut Up” isn’t urgent. For all of its hooks, the song never makes you think that you can’t go on with your day until it ends. The hook is the end, not the means. It’s a problem that affects a lot of the indie-pop that’s been thrown at us in the past couple decades and, unfortunately, is prevelent in this era of Tom’s musical interest.
Luckily, “Resident” was also made during Tom’s (and my own) peak interest in pro wrestling and that led to “Extreme Theme’s” inclusion.3 It’s absolutely silly and terrible and everything that made Paul Heyman’s little-fed-that-could so fun to watch.
As further luck would have it, there’re still plenty of killer tracks jammed in here between the mostly annoying Heavenly songs. “A Letter To the Coach” is an understated scorcher. Like a lot of Superchunk, it doesn’t come off as particularly pressing at first, but there’s something impetuous under its first layer. “
Small Factory’s “The Last Time We Talked” is the antithesis of my little rant above: an urgent song laden with hooks at the right spot, meeting my reptilian brain’s desire for pop and my heart’s desire to beat a little faster as the chorus builds. It’s a brilliantly crafted song. Everything fits together just right, with timely drum fills and soaring chord progressions that release in bursts. Absolutely awesome and heart-wrenching and rockin’.
“Me, My Drums, and You” does same thing for twee that “Last Time” does for indie-pop: justify the genre. No point in trying to explain. It’s just a good, catchy love song.
And then we get to “Pit Full Of Snakes”... In the past few years, I’ve grown a bigger hip-hop vocabulary. That’s bound to happen when you grow into a mild obsession with the Wu-Tang.4 But hearing this RZA-produced5 track for the first time in a while, I have to kick myself for not diving into this stuff faster. I’ve always liked this track; At times, it was probably my favorite hip hop song of all time. But I admit that I kind of forgot about it until recently, and that’s unfortunate. “Snakes” is as good as any other Wu-banger. It’s a fantastically EVIL classic of East Coast style that never let’s the listener feel comfortable. The production is appropriately haunting, but the beat keeps simplistic enough to allow that subconscious head nodding.
Final note: I think I love Sloan. “All By Ourselves” follows the Gravediggaz track and, oddly enough, fits perfectly. The “horrorcore” rap and its East Coast tempo flows wonderfully into Canadian power-pop in terms of tempo and beat, if not in mood, style, or purpose.6 But, frankly, I think I’m late to the party. Emusic lists 9 LPs and manages to recommend 5 of them. Simply: I’m too far from this band to dive head-first into 9+ LPs of music. They’re littered over every tape Tom gave me for almost a decade and I can’t say a single bad thing about them, but I also have no point of reference as to where I should start. And even if I start now, with much available to me, I feel that it will all feel hollow. They seem like a band that you need to discover and obsess over at a certain time in one’s life, and I have a feeling that time has passed…
1 This was the first tape where Tom put no effort into the J-card. He simply cut up junk-mail from his cable company in
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Cover art for "Nazis"
Sorry, I really should have scanned this in last time. Oh, and nice guesswork, Sherlock - the tape fucking says "1998" on it.
In Defense of "Pubes. . . "
Dan has really gone apeshit with this, as I'd hoped he would. Footnotes? Wha? 1
I suppose I should feel honor-bound to defend the mix he tore a few new ones in, but he pretty much summarized my defense in one line: I was indeed in college, and newly in college at that. Looking at this mix, though, I'm proud to say that with the exception of They Might Be Giants, most of my iffy high school tastes had passed and I can stand by most of those songs as being pretty awesome or occassionally tolerable. But, I'll get to TMBG in a second.
This is as good a time as any for me to explain my attitude towards making mixes for Dan, and for the most part making mixes for anybody, which has pretty much remained intact lo these years. My primary goal has been to find things in my collection that I think the person I'm giving the mix would like but probably doesn't have in his/her collection yet. I worry sometimes (especially in the ensuing years where my collection expanded both in size and in diversity) that Dan thinks I'm trying to drop a Snob Bomb on him but I could have put some seriously wimpy shit on this if I'd liked. And there are truly, truly some hits on this (as he's detailed). As he's correctly surmised, when in doubt, I included the fastest, loudest song I had from the band.
But, it's not only a college mix, but a pretty irritatingly cliche (in retrospect) college mix. It's funny how I thought I was hot shit for loving all these bands but man, it's pretty obvious I mostly read SPIN in high school and didn't got to a lot of shows until college. I'm glad Dan liked this one but I'm hoping my subsequent mixes showed a little more personality.
Looking that holy quintuplet of Indies involved, only really Sebadoh and Superchunk are bands I still really have a deep feeling for and it's because they actually wrote songs about people and life, and that means they'll resonate more than the rockin' (Archers), catchy (GbV), and, um, "smart" (Pavement). I made this mix at a time before I'd ever had a girlfriend or a relationship (nice one, Superstud) but lemme tell ya, when there were suddenly ladies and emotions and arguments and make-ups, Sebadoh became a necessity. Not that I put one of THOSE 'doh songs on this mix; as Dan pointed out, I put on the "rockin'" one. Same thing with Superchunk - those songs still yank out the occasional tear. Of all the huge hits that maybe would have stuck with Dan a little longer, I wimped out and put on "punk" songs. Such a waste - now look at Dan. I take responsibility.
Anyway, I'm going to spend some time discussing TMBG, who are sort of weird animal; they figured prominently in my high school musical (uh?) tastes because I was a dorky smart kid who liked thinking he was "different" (ugh) but wasn't punk or goth or metal or anything else that might have made girls like me. When I got more into the real and true indie and punk, I'd already overplayed every song TMBG'd ever put out and the cute/clever aspect of their songs started losing the joke a bit.
However, having lived in New York for over 7 years now, and having taken every opportunity to talk to people who really lived in the city and see it morph into this oversold, brunch-and-pugs wonderland for graphic designers, it's really interesting to read the liner notes from "Then..." (from which these two songs are taken, though they're originally from TMBG's s/t debut) and think of two nerds living in parts of Brooklyn that are far cries from the yuppified current versions and playing music in the East Village when it was a semi-scary place filled with desperately weird and interesting people scraping together creative lives because there was nowhere else in this country that could support such goofiness. Oh, and crackheads. Now, the East Village is an irritating, incredibly overpriced neighborhood that I generally avoid. Probably because crack's easier to come by here in Crown Heights. Anyway.
Those first couple of records (s/t and "Lincoln"2) really don't sound like anything else going on in NYC at the time (ESG - Sonic Youth - hardcore punk - Mars - Glenn Branca - James Chance - beginnings of crossover hip-hop) and the songs remain catchy as hell and really cool and DIY, self-recorded collages that seemingly wasn't meant for an audience of real people.
And, TMBG was a "gateway" band for me (and I doubt I'm alone here) - the story is thus. When our family first moved to Cloquet, MN (up near Duluth), I would fall asleep with my headphones on, listening to the radio. At the time Nirvana was getting their big break ("Teen Spirit" had recently hit) and I was of course excited by this new, strange, loud thing that wasn't at all like the metal that was on the radio, but I didn't know what "punk" really was except that I'd heard the Ramones on beer commercials.
One night, trolling the dial, I stopped on what I thought was the rock station because I heard a Nirvana song3, but when I heard a They Might Be Giants song (who I know from Tiny Tune Adventures) (God, am I a tool), I kept listening - turns out it was KUMD, Duluth Public Radio, playing "alt" rock, which they did every weekday night for two hours. Radio tapes of this show became my staple listening for the first half of high school. (Turns out I wasn't that cool - the really indie station was across the river at KUWS, which played legitimately cool and weird stuff during the same night hours but was harder to pick up on my little radio).The rest is, well, mixtapes.
Anyway, I don't listen to They Might Be Giants anymore hardly ever, but I'm glad they were around. And, I guess I'm glad people are still excited about them now, though they seem more for kids of cool parents. I hate cool parents.
Roundup: I guess if I was going to pick ONE SMITHS SONG EVER for Dan to try to like, Bigmouth's the one. "Out There" still remains one of Juliana Hatfield's few truly lasting moments - check out that fucking exploding teenage chorus! If I never heard another Pixies song the rest of my life, I'd be fine; who still gets excited about Pixies songs?. Sugar, like all Mould material, gets harsher grades the older I get in part because I was so in love with the guy (and, y'know, still am) that I didn't recognize how much filler he writes; "Mind" is a good example of that. I bought that Dino Jr. tape at the WalMart in Orange Park Florida; good idea. "Kill the Musicians" was my first full-price record purchase in Tallahassee, at the OLD Vinyl Fever across the street from what used to be the Publix I was employed at on Pensacola Street.
This mix wasn't that bad, I suppose - just not all that imaginitive or interesting. Here's hoping they get better from here on out. . .
1 Yes indeed, this was a reference to Dan's inability to keep a bathroom floor clean. At the time, though, I was being confronted with Communal Living in an All-Male Florida Dorm That Didn't Have Air-Conditioning. Dan, I'll admit that you were a better roommate than 75 other guys in a building that was scheduled for remodeling the next year so when something broke they just told you to stop using it, which is why my floor only had one working shower.
2 Our sister Debbie actually gave me her cassette of "Lincoln" back when I was a freshman in high school - she was over being cool at that point. The other tape that I scored in that giveaway was the Dead Milkmen's "Beelzbubba." Thanks, Deb!
3 Soon, I would learn that this song was "Breed."
I suppose I should feel honor-bound to defend the mix he tore a few new ones in, but he pretty much summarized my defense in one line: I was indeed in college, and newly in college at that. Looking at this mix, though, I'm proud to say that with the exception of They Might Be Giants, most of my iffy high school tastes had passed and I can stand by most of those songs as being pretty awesome or occassionally tolerable. But, I'll get to TMBG in a second.
This is as good a time as any for me to explain my attitude towards making mixes for Dan, and for the most part making mixes for anybody, which has pretty much remained intact lo these years. My primary goal has been to find things in my collection that I think the person I'm giving the mix would like but probably doesn't have in his/her collection yet. I worry sometimes (especially in the ensuing years where my collection expanded both in size and in diversity) that Dan thinks I'm trying to drop a Snob Bomb on him but I could have put some seriously wimpy shit on this if I'd liked. And there are truly, truly some hits on this (as he's detailed). As he's correctly surmised, when in doubt, I included the fastest, loudest song I had from the band.
But, it's not only a college mix, but a pretty irritatingly cliche (in retrospect) college mix. It's funny how I thought I was hot shit for loving all these bands but man, it's pretty obvious I mostly read SPIN in high school and didn't got to a lot of shows until college. I'm glad Dan liked this one but I'm hoping my subsequent mixes showed a little more personality.
Looking that holy quintuplet of Indies involved, only really Sebadoh and Superchunk are bands I still really have a deep feeling for and it's because they actually wrote songs about people and life, and that means they'll resonate more than the rockin' (Archers), catchy (GbV), and, um, "smart" (Pavement). I made this mix at a time before I'd ever had a girlfriend or a relationship (nice one, Superstud) but lemme tell ya, when there were suddenly ladies and emotions and arguments and make-ups, Sebadoh became a necessity. Not that I put one of THOSE 'doh songs on this mix; as Dan pointed out, I put on the "rockin'" one. Same thing with Superchunk - those songs still yank out the occasional tear. Of all the huge hits that maybe would have stuck with Dan a little longer, I wimped out and put on "punk" songs. Such a waste - now look at Dan. I take responsibility.
Anyway, I'm going to spend some time discussing TMBG, who are sort of weird animal; they figured prominently in my high school musical (uh?) tastes because I was a dorky smart kid who liked thinking he was "different" (ugh) but wasn't punk or goth or metal or anything else that might have made girls like me. When I got more into the real and true indie and punk, I'd already overplayed every song TMBG'd ever put out and the cute/clever aspect of their songs started losing the joke a bit.
However, having lived in New York for over 7 years now, and having taken every opportunity to talk to people who really lived in the city and see it morph into this oversold, brunch-and-pugs wonderland for graphic designers, it's really interesting to read the liner notes from "Then..." (from which these two songs are taken, though they're originally from TMBG's s/t debut) and think of two nerds living in parts of Brooklyn that are far cries from the yuppified current versions and playing music in the East Village when it was a semi-scary place filled with desperately weird and interesting people scraping together creative lives because there was nowhere else in this country that could support such goofiness. Oh, and crackheads. Now, the East Village is an irritating, incredibly overpriced neighborhood that I generally avoid. Probably because crack's easier to come by here in Crown Heights. Anyway.
Those first couple of records (s/t and "Lincoln"2) really don't sound like anything else going on in NYC at the time (ESG - Sonic Youth - hardcore punk - Mars - Glenn Branca - James Chance - beginnings of crossover hip-hop) and the songs remain catchy as hell and really cool and DIY, self-recorded collages that seemingly wasn't meant for an audience of real people.
And, TMBG was a "gateway" band for me (and I doubt I'm alone here) - the story is thus. When our family first moved to Cloquet, MN (up near Duluth), I would fall asleep with my headphones on, listening to the radio. At the time Nirvana was getting their big break ("Teen Spirit" had recently hit) and I was of course excited by this new, strange, loud thing that wasn't at all like the metal that was on the radio, but I didn't know what "punk" really was except that I'd heard the Ramones on beer commercials.
One night, trolling the dial, I stopped on what I thought was the rock station because I heard a Nirvana song3, but when I heard a They Might Be Giants song (who I know from Tiny Tune Adventures) (God, am I a tool), I kept listening - turns out it was KUMD, Duluth Public Radio, playing "alt" rock, which they did every weekday night for two hours. Radio tapes of this show became my staple listening for the first half of high school. (Turns out I wasn't that cool - the really indie station was across the river at KUWS, which played legitimately cool and weird stuff during the same night hours but was harder to pick up on my little radio).The rest is, well, mixtapes.
Anyway, I don't listen to They Might Be Giants anymore hardly ever, but I'm glad they were around. And, I guess I'm glad people are still excited about them now, though they seem more for kids of cool parents. I hate cool parents.
Roundup: I guess if I was going to pick ONE SMITHS SONG EVER for Dan to try to like, Bigmouth's the one. "Out There" still remains one of Juliana Hatfield's few truly lasting moments - check out that fucking exploding teenage chorus! If I never heard another Pixies song the rest of my life, I'd be fine; who still gets excited about Pixies songs?. Sugar, like all Mould material, gets harsher grades the older I get in part because I was so in love with the guy (and, y'know, still am) that I didn't recognize how much filler he writes; "Mind" is a good example of that. I bought that Dino Jr. tape at the WalMart in Orange Park Florida; good idea. "Kill the Musicians" was my first full-price record purchase in Tallahassee, at the OLD Vinyl Fever across the street from what used to be the Publix I was employed at on Pensacola Street.
This mix wasn't that bad, I suppose - just not all that imaginitive or interesting. Here's hoping they get better from here on out. . .
1 Yes indeed, this was a reference to Dan's inability to keep a bathroom floor clean. At the time, though, I was being confronted with Communal Living in an All-Male Florida Dorm That Didn't Have Air-Conditioning. Dan, I'll admit that you were a better roommate than 75 other guys in a building that was scheduled for remodeling the next year so when something broke they just told you to stop using it, which is why my floor only had one working shower.
2 Our sister Debbie actually gave me her cassette of "Lincoln" back when I was a freshman in high school - she was over being cool at that point. The other tape that I scored in that giveaway was the Dead Milkmen's "Beelzbubba." Thanks, Deb!
3 Soon, I would learn that this song was "Breed."
Friday, June 13, 2008
“Pubes On the Floor By the Toilet” – Tom, 19951
(No j-card art; Hand-written title and track info.)
I, too, have no intention of doing my contributions in chronological order, but I do think that this needed to be first. Besides being the first mix Tom gave me, it was the first mix anyone had given me. As mentioned in previous posts, credit is due to Tom getting me into punk2. With this, he got me into mix tapes.
Now, like anyone interested in music in the 90’s, I was an avid Radio-Taper. There were two species of this animal: the get-up-as-each-song-ended-to-possibly-unpause-the-record-function-in-case-something-awesome-was-next variety and the record-whole-programs-that-were-known-to-play-stuff-you-liked-then-go-back-and-dub-the-good-stuff-to-a-running-tape-of-songs-of-interest variety (The former would inevitably evolve into the latter when a dual-cassette stereo was purchased- or more likely received as a gift.) I had numerous songs-of-interest tapes by this point and was making dubbed mixes of CDs for portability.3 This tape, though, was something new: a personal mix that said “This stuff is awesome, you should listen to it because I am.” Not a revolutionary idea, but I think there has to be love of your first mix tape even if it sucks.
I assure you: this mix tape does not suck. In fact, this mix tape is composed with so many hits that it’s a fucking cliché. Although it opens with a pretty soulless Ramones cover by
If there’s one obvious thing in this mix, it’s that Tom was in college. And it was 1995. The track listing is a virtual college radio best-of from that period: The ‘Chunk, Sebadoh, Pavement, the Archers, GBV, Sugar, Material Issue, the Blake Babies. Clichés, every one of them! If this was Tom’s attempt to get his newly-born-punk little brother into the deeper, more intelligent, more mature indie rock that was all the rage in
In my older, deeper, more intelligent, more mature self of today, some of these bands are no-brainers. The Hüskers and the Archers are both critical to my basic concept of rock and roll today. They’re represented with the four tracks that are not far from perfection. “Mind Is an
There aren’t many complaints: “Bigmouth” is my favorite Smiths song, but that’s not much of a compliment. The last few times I’ve heard it were at bars, where I’m pretty sure it was played as a joke (probably made by me). There’s the two TMBG songs, neither of which are funny or interesting or witty or any other adjective ever used to describe a TMBG song. I remember skipping them often. My interest in GBV peaked around this time, but has since faded to nothing. I never purchased anything by them and Pollard’s ditties here don’t make me want to now.
I own the albums on which 8 of the 11.5 Side A tracks appear; 6.5 of the 13.5 from Side B. Obviously, there’s an influence on my music collection that can be traced back to this tape. However, today I relate the Archers songs with the albums they’re off of rather than this mix. I’m a far bigger fan of Ben Weasel’s stuff than Tom ever was. Yes, this may have been the turning point of my love for Screeching Weasel, but it’s impossible to associate any of these songs to this particular tape. I guess if there’s one negative to giving someone a tape, one that helps mold their taste to such a ridiculous aspect, it’s that the tape itself will dissolve into a “greatest hits” collection instead of being a statement in and of itself. Such is “Pubes…”
I didn’t purposely avoid this tape for any reason over the past few years, but just a glance at the track listing would probably bring up the question, “Why?” As in, why would I put this on, this glorified personal mix? This (narrow) collection of best-of’s from (pretty much) my personal musical hostory? Listening through a couple times, I found three reasons, of which I had pretty much forgotten over time.
“Raza Odiada” was put on here, I assume, as some sort of joke. See, the song opens with Jello Biafra doing his best Gov. Pete Wilson impression, and in doing so, completely exposes the silliness of Prop 187 before Mexican radicals assassinate him. Or something. I’m not against political songs but those that date those politics date the songs themselves. Outside of the hammer-the-kids’-heads preaching, the song once felt heavy to me. Maybe it’s that metal influence that Tom seems to be so against, but it no longer does. Forgive my limited knowledge in this field, but it sounds like the band doesn’t have the right amps. There isn’t a deep level of sound in the song, and if I want poli-español, I’ll listen to Los Crudos, thank you. Clearly, it’s not like “Raza” is a particularly great song or has anything universally topical to say, but in a way it represents that “Get it?” point in the tape. I’m not sure if I’ve heard, made, or conceptualized a mix tape since this that did not have that tongue-in-cheek track. There’s nothing amusing, impressive, or inspirational about the song, yet we always include something like it; A moment of levity in it’s manufacturing.
I tried, very hard, to get into the Damned in my early punk years. Needless to say, they failed in every way to get my attention, from their albums to the time I saw them in late 2001 at the Metro (the Utters opened) where left six songs in (after “New Rose”). Hearing the LP version of “Melody Lee” for the first time in half a decade made me realize how completely awesome the song is. Unfortunately, it suffers from KISS disease: if only some other band was performing it! Captain Sensible’s operatic vocals gave the song, at the time, a sense of drama. In the post-Misfit’s era, one simply wants to punch him for birthing Glenn Danzig and the Goth culture. This song begs for a great cover that can truly bring out the sadness and panic in it. Please, someone hear this and try!
Finally, let me just say that I’ll never “get” Pavement. I’ll never understand why they, more than any band of their scene, get unflinching praise to better bands. It could certainly be proposed that the current hipster/Pitchfork/Williamsburg culture is the result of people who like Pavement way too fuckin’ much. But the negative influences of the band itself have left two truly great songs in the dust: “Cut Your Hair,” their biggest, silliest hit, and “Here,” a sadly painful track. “Here,” from a personal standpoint, represents what should have been a step towards the alt-county/folk scene that was blossoming (or dying, depending on your view) in ’95-’96. It took another 6 or 7 years before I caught up and I suppose I’m sorry for missing it. But if Pavement, with their slack-folk impressism and Malkmus’ own descent into the indie nether regions of didn’t-quit-while-ahead (see: Sonic Youth), was my first exposure forgive me for my loss. “Here” is a great song. To see past the bullshit, though, it took more years to really understand.
I won’t be accepting that forgiveness.
Side A
- Die Toten Hosen w/Joey Ramone – Blitzkrieg Bop
- Screeching Weasel – Punkhouse
- The Clash –
- Superchunk – Forged It
- Hüsker Dü – Powerline (Live)
- Dinosaur Jr. – In a Jar
- Archers Of Loaf – Backwash
- They Might Be Giants – I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die
- Sebadoh – God Told Me
- Pavement – Here
- Sugar – Mind Is an
- Liz Phair and Material Issue – Turning Japanese (cut off)
Side B
- The Pixies – Cecilia Ann
- Descendents – I’m Not a Loser
- The Smiths – Bigmouth Strikes Again
- Archers Of Loaf – Underdogs of Nipomo
- The Damned – Melody Lee
- Screeching Weasel – I Think We’re Alone Now
- Screeching Weasel – I Can See Clearly Now
- Guided By Voices – Indian Fables
- Guided By Voices – Kisses From the Crying Cooks
- Bruharia – Raza Odiada (Peter [sic]
- Archers Of Loaf – Telepathic Traffic
- Blake Babies – Out There
- They Might Be Giants – Rhythm Section Want Ad
- Tom’s pre-digital attempt at a mash-up of Daniel Johnston’s “Jelly Beans” and Hüsker Dü’s “Plans I Make”
1 On some really fucked up level, this tape can be truly seen as a push for adulthood (puberty, physiologically). It’s really trying to be a step above punk; a step from the ineptitude of youth to the confidence of adulthood… Or, more likely, Tom just picked a terrible title that was supposed to, on some fucked up level, make me remember our lives sharing a bathroom. Seriously, fucking awful title.
2 This was inevitable. Seriously, I’ll never be able to pay back Tom for his influence, but I was going to get into punk at some point. Maybe he saved me from the mid-90’s emo boom…
3 I never owned a portable CD player. At 23, 4 years after the first gen iPod and Creative MP3 players and my first CD burner, I finally got rid of my Sony Walkman (cassette) for a Sony NW-E507. Well into adulthood, I was walking into a gym with a huge Walkman clipped to my shorts…
4 I was already “sold” on Sugar at this point, and I think Tom knew that. The obvious thing would be to put something from “Copper Blue” on here, but that was old hat; “File Under Easy Listening” never lived up to the promises made earlier. The obvious thing to do was pick the hardest song off the available singles. Tom did just that.
Friday, June 6, 2008
In Defense Of: “Ever Get That… Feeling”
Couple months ago, couple of friends and I took a weekend drive to visit Dr. Leslie in
“Survival,” of course, is one of the more significant releases in punk history: it is, to my knowledge, the first major comp to retail at a sub-$5 cost. For some reason, it took ‘til ’96 and Fat to realize that comps shouldn’t be low-volume, high-profit sellers where $12 gets a kid a bunch of already available crap he has no interest in. “Survival” cost that kid $4 and exposed them to bands they had no other outlet to hear. Fat had lured them in with a sweet, sexy price. Marketing! “Survival” is ubiqutous to mid-90’s punk kids for this reason. Not everyone owned it; that wasn’t necessary. But one or two people in every group of friends did (‘cause it was way cheap) and, if you were between the ages of 13 and 17 and into punk rock when it was released, you knew those songs front to back. I lived in FL when it was released; Dr. Leslie in IL. I first saw her copy around 2000 and wasn’t surprised at all: UBIQUTOUS.
Now, halfway through the comp, remembering half of all the lyrics with a half-drunk mind, I noticed Dr. Leslie’s friend Dr. Phoebe not half-sure what to think. The result was a baby epiphany: this wasn’t her scene. At least, in 1996 it wasn’t. I vainly tried to explain, but to no avail. That’s when that epiphany grew up and got a job and became the confident adult-epiphany it was destined to be. See, our musical taste, no matter our age, are forever linked to our musical tastes between 13 and 17 years old. Before we can smoke or scratch lottery tickets- well before we can drown ourselves in booze- our inlet to our personalities is music. As adults, then, it’s no surprise that the music of that period of our lives is so critical to us, and so difficult to explain to anyone else.2 If I heard “Punk In Drublic” or “Lucky Streak” for the first time today, I would write them off as disrespectful to what came before and never try again. Yet, for all their obvious faults, those records still sound as important to me as ever.
…Which brings us to this blog project, my “In Defense Of…” feature, and, specifically, this tape. Looking at the track listing, I’m not sure if I can have more conflicted levels of love and “what the hell was I thinking?” Side A, 1-4 cannot be denied: a solid modernized cover of one of the best reggae songs ever by a genius band outside of any genre, the title track to the second best EP of all time3, the pinnacle of Dropkick’s 1.5 album awesomeness, and the track that forced me to explore deeper into the Church of Speedo (HALLELUJAH!). Showoff, though, was a time-and-place love that hasn’t held up. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies? Ugh.
That, I think, is the interesting thing here: why do some bands, some songs, stand up over time? Why don’t others? There are clearly huge misses here (anything of ska-punk origin4, Showoff), but the hits are still built into my musical personality on deeper levels than most anything I’ll hear for the rest of my life. “I Met Her At The Rat” is the best thing Joe Queer ever did and one of the basic staples in the history of punk. “I Wanna Be With You Tonight” is one of Ben Weasel’s best pop songs (and given the source of that comment, that means a whole lot in regards to its romanticism and beauty). F.O.C’s stuff still lingers in my heart as a band that should have been national but never got out of N.E. FL. The 88 Fingers Louie and Three Days5 songs are period pieces to me: more personal now than at the moment I heard them. The Bouncing Souls stuff was still during their period as my generation’s Descendents (kind of a joke but capable to be heart-breaking-ly honest).
Wait. Goldfinger? Jesus, what the fuck was I thinking? Burn it. Now.
Notes and Corrections:
- Tom was right about “All Ages,” although part of me is surprised that some version of it is still on the air. Amber, original co-host of the show, still owes me a Supersleuth6 CD for calling in the correct Cubs score one Friday night in ’98 or so. I looked the score up on the internet, by the way. Oh, and once I went to the Naperville Borders (where, obviously, she worked and looked supercute) and gave her a copy of the GB! demo to play a track or two on the air. She didn’t. Gonna hold my tongue.
- It seems as if the first wave ska/reggae doesn’t hit the family until later in life. We get it later, though…
2 The corrolary to this theory is posited by Andy Greenwald in “Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo.” In the book, published in 2003 when Dashboard Confessional was supposed to take over the World, Greenwald explains that the reason that we, as adults or nigh-adults obsessed with punk and indie, are not able to understand the rise of early-00’s emo is because it is a TEEN revolution. That is, we cannot understand because we didn’t grow up with this music. It’s a mostly interesting book, but seriously fails when trying to sell Dashboard via jocks that use “Chris” to convince girls that they have “emotions” and “fuck them.” My major issue with the book is that the audience is never established: at any point it feels like it’s written to us punk-indie kids to try to explain the phenomonon, while other times it feels like it were written to parents to explain what their kids are doing at unsupervised hours.
3 The greatest, of course, is the Archers’ “Greatest Of All Time.” Thanks, Tom. More on this in a later post…
4 Minus The Pietasters, who perfectly bridged the neo-trad style of the Slackers or Hepcat and the 3rd-wave ska-punk stuff. Until I saw RFTC for the first time, The ‘Tasters long held my belief in what a band should be doing on-stage.
5One cannot do a google search for Three Days, because they picked a name that is simply undiscoverable via the internet. Simply: snotty punk band from
6 88 Fingers Louie rip-off band from
Thursday, June 5, 2008
"Ever Get That 'Chased by Nazis' Feeling?" - Dan, 1997
Back about 3 or 4 months ago, my brother Dan and I had an idea where we'd go back and review the mixes we've given each other over the years, at least to give us an excuse to start writing things again, besides stupid jokes on our friends' email lists. And, I thought it might be fun to go back and sort of use this music to revisit those part of our lives from each other's perspectives.
Anyway, this is my first review and it's probably going to be the hardest to write because, um, I forgot how to write in a normal voice. But, this is just for fun and it's not like anybody except Dan will judge it, though he's one of the harsher judges I know.
Fuck chronological order; I just grabbed the first tape I could find. Our first victim is a tape that, based on two minutes of research I just did, appears to have been given to me in the second half of 1997, and it's titled "Ever Get That 'Chased by Nazis' Feeling?". There's some radio bits on here ("I'm not going to play Pink Floyd, and I don't care if you have 600 people at your party.") that appear to be from the punk show that Dan used to listen to late nights on WONC (North Central College, Illinois) which means that this would have been made after Dan and our folks moved from Green Cove Springs, FL to the Naperville, IL area. Aw. Anyway, I looked it up and I think this is the MySpace page for that show: http://www.myspace.com/allagesradio891
Dan had an adorable practice of giving his mixtapes catalog numbers on his record label, Bombs Away Records. I'm sure this was useful for keeping track of who he gave what to: I'll have to make him explain, or I'll just wait til I think I'm done reviewing these and he'll explain in a hurt voice that I left out Bombs Away releases # 021, 042, 044, etc. This release is BOMB008.
This is very much deep into Dan's ska-punk days. (Track list below.) This period of Dan's musical taste is actually pretty meaningful for me, as I was going into my second year of true indie snob immersion at WVFS and I like to think that Dan kept me "punk honest" since our station didn't really play much punk (cos we were too cool) and there's a lot of stuff from his mixes that caught me and kept me into pop-punk. (Ska, though, kind of a loss.) Of course, it wouldn't be too long before Dan's mixes would get very metallic.
I'll start with what rules hard, on that note: pop-punk megahits. "I Met Her at the Rat" (Queers), "Scarred by Love" (Nobodys feat. Joe Queer), a solid tune from Screeching Weasel off of My Brain Hurts (which makes up for the other three included SW tunes which are, um, subpar). Anyway, I realize I'm plowing through the first half of my thirties and I'm supposed to be over this kind of thing but in this weird way my musical tastes have been "devolving" towards some punky stuff like the Copyrights (a band Dan actually turned me on to), and I'm glad I had my brother feeding this stuff to me when people kept gagging me with Polvo.
There's a good chunk of Rancid tunes on here (from that little post-"Wolves," pre-"Life Won't Wait" era, I think mostly from comps), and several cuts off of the first Hellcat Records "Give 'Em the Boot" sampler. I don't know how to review Rancid songs - they're so brutally earnest that it sort of sucks the fun out of them, but hey, my brother might have ended up a very different person had I not bought him "Let's Go" for his 13th birthday. (I take credit. That's right.)
A couple of embarrassments: Cherry Poppin' Daddies? C'mon, bro - I hope that isn't sitting on the same shelf with all those Kylesa discs these days. How was this stuff popular, and how did it cross into ska and then into punk? It's godawful and silly but it seems like somebody must have been getting laid. Ick. Also, according to Wikipedia, they're recording a new record! Gah! Unfortunately, there's also some fun songs that are ruined by the fact that they were probably used in zany teen movie chase scenes around this time; the Pietasters' "Out All Night" is a good example of this. The Blue Meanies' "Yelling in My Ear" is like a ska Mr. Bungle song. I fucking hate Mr. Bungle.
Awesome surprise that I forgot about: The Skatalites' "You're Wondering Now" feat. Doreen Shaeffer - this sounds so clean and wonderful, just golden. I didn't take the time to listen to much roots ska/reggae until several years after this but it's nice to hear something that retains that roots feel with a bit of restrained modern polish to it.
An early hint of Dan's Chicago Punker Future rears its head as 88 Fingers Louie gets represented here with "I Hate Myself." Also, I don't know enough about Chixdiggit (though I often catch myself singing "O-H-I-O") but "20 Times" is a tight power pop tune.
It's been awhile since I listened to a mixtape of any sort and I'd forgotten how fun and/or frustrating it was to make the goddamn things, and I'm reminded by the inclusion of 19. Boris the Sprinkler's "Side 2" (a jokey little bit about how you should pretend to flip the CD over). There was a time when I could look at how much tape was left on the spool and tell you how much time was actually left. D'oh. Always nice to hear the Reverend Norb's voice, though.
(Hey, I was at this show! 1999 Cedarfest in Minneapolis - http://members.tripod.com/sheenaramone/images/Boris02.jpg )
Overall, this is a solid punk mix that reminds me of how I used to tell Dan, "I liked the punk stuff but could do without the ska bullshit." Stupid bad ska made me ignore real roots reggae for years out of spite. . . I might have been more fun in college if I hadn't been so closed-minded. Ah well. At some point in the future I was be telling Dan, "I like the punk stuff but could do without all the metal bullshit."
The Bouncing Souls ate all the Chicken in a Biskit! Which coincides with my college-era obsession with those things.
"Ever Get That 'Chased by Nazis' Feeling?"
Track list:
Side A
1. Rancid - The Harder They Come (live)
2. The Vindictives - Rocks in My Head
3. Dropkick Murphys - Boys on the Docks
4. Rocket from the Crypt - Don't Darlene
5. Showoff - Bulley
6. The Cherry Poppin' Daddies - Shake Your Lovemaker
7. The Queers - I Met Her at the Rat
8. Skankin' Pickle - I Missed the Bus (live)
9. MU330 - Stuff
10. Screeching Weasel - Love
11. The Bouncing Souls - Say Anything
12. No Empathy - Oi Across America (live)
13. Mustard Plug - Beer (Song)
14. Union 13 - Roots Radicals
15. Boris the Sprinkler - Girls Like You
16. The Goops - Vulgar Appetites
17. The Mr. T. Experience - Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend
18. Nobodys - D.U.M.B.-er
19. Boris the Sprinkler - SIde 2
Side B.
1. The Bouncing Souls - East Coast! Fuck You!
2. F.O.C. - Northside Out
3. Gotohells - I Wanna Be a Ramone
4. The Skatalites - You're Wondering Now
5. Screeching Weasel - Experience the Ozzfish
5. The Pietasters - Out All Night
7. The Blue Meanies - Yellin' in My Ear
8.Showoff - Marilyn Hanson
9. Skankin' Pickle - I'm in Love with a Girl Named Spike
10. Rancid - Just a Feeling
11. Rancid - Someone's Gonna Die
12. Goldfinger - I Need to Know
13. Three Days - Jet Boy, Jet Girl
14. Screeching Weasel - I Wanna Be With You Tonight
15. NOFX - Murder the Government
16. Nobodys w/ Joe Queer - Scarred by Love
17. The Pietasters - Freak Show
18. 88 Fingers Louie - I Hate Myself
19. Chixdiggit - 20 Times
20. Showoff - Gone
21. The Bouncing Souls - Shark Attack
22. Screeching Weasel - Runaway
Anyway, this is my first review and it's probably going to be the hardest to write because, um, I forgot how to write in a normal voice. But, this is just for fun and it's not like anybody except Dan will judge it, though he's one of the harsher judges I know.
Fuck chronological order; I just grabbed the first tape I could find. Our first victim is a tape that, based on two minutes of research I just did, appears to have been given to me in the second half of 1997, and it's titled "Ever Get That 'Chased by Nazis' Feeling?". There's some radio bits on here ("I'm not going to play Pink Floyd, and I don't care if you have 600 people at your party.") that appear to be from the punk show that Dan used to listen to late nights on WONC (North Central College, Illinois) which means that this would have been made after Dan and our folks moved from Green Cove Springs, FL to the Naperville, IL area. Aw. Anyway, I looked it up and I think this is the MySpace page for that show: http://www.myspace.com/allagesr
Dan had an adorable practice of giving his mixtapes catalog numbers on his record label, Bombs Away Records. I'm sure this was useful for keeping track of who he gave what to: I'll have to make him explain, or I'll just wait til I think I'm done reviewing these and he'll explain in a hurt voice that I left out Bombs Away releases # 021, 042, 044, etc. This release is BOMB008.
This is very much deep into Dan's ska-punk days. (Track list below.) This period of Dan's musical taste is actually pretty meaningful for me, as I was going into my second year of true indie snob immersion at WVFS and I like to think that Dan kept me "punk honest" since our station didn't really play much punk (cos we were too cool) and there's a lot of stuff from his mixes that caught me and kept me into pop-punk. (Ska, though, kind of a loss.) Of course, it wouldn't be too long before Dan's mixes would get very metallic.
I'll start with what rules hard, on that note: pop-punk megahits. "I Met Her at the Rat" (Queers), "Scarred by Love" (Nobodys feat. Joe Queer), a solid tune from Screeching Weasel off of My Brain Hurts (which makes up for the other three included SW tunes which are, um, subpar). Anyway, I realize I'm plowing through the first half of my thirties and I'm supposed to be over this kind of thing but in this weird way my musical tastes have been "devolving" towards some punky stuff like the Copyrights (a band Dan actually turned me on to), and I'm glad I had my brother feeding this stuff to me when people kept gagging me with Polvo.
There's a good chunk of Rancid tunes on here (from that little post-"Wolves," pre-"Life Won't Wait" era, I think mostly from comps), and several cuts off of the first Hellcat Records "Give 'Em the Boot" sampler. I don't know how to review Rancid songs - they're so brutally earnest that it sort of sucks the fun out of them, but hey, my brother might have ended up a very different person had I not bought him "Let's Go" for his 13th birthday. (I take credit. That's right.)
A couple of embarrassments: Cherry Poppin' Daddies? C'mon, bro - I hope that isn't sitting on the same shelf with all those Kylesa discs these days. How was this stuff popular, and how did it cross into ska and then into punk? It's godawful and silly but it seems like somebody must have been getting laid. Ick. Also, according to Wikipedia, they're recording a new record! Gah! Unfortunately, there's also some fun songs that are ruined by the fact that they were probably used in zany teen movie chase scenes around this time; the Pietasters' "Out All Night" is a good example of this. The Blue Meanies' "Yelling in My Ear" is like a ska Mr. Bungle song. I fucking hate Mr. Bungle.
Awesome surprise that I forgot about: The Skatalites' "You're Wondering Now" feat. Doreen Shaeffer - this sounds so clean and wonderful, just golden. I didn't take the time to listen to much roots ska/reggae until several years after this but it's nice to hear something that retains that roots feel with a bit of restrained modern polish to it.
An early hint of Dan's Chicago Punker Future rears its head as 88 Fingers Louie gets represented here with "I Hate Myself." Also, I don't know enough about Chixdiggit (though I often catch myself singing "O-H-I-O") but "20 Times" is a tight power pop tune.
It's been awhile since I listened to a mixtape of any sort and I'd forgotten how fun and/or frustrating it was to make the goddamn things, and I'm reminded by the inclusion of 19. Boris the Sprinkler's "Side 2" (a jokey little bit about how you should pretend to flip the CD over). There was a time when I could look at how much tape was left on the spool and tell you how much time was actually left. D'oh. Always nice to hear the Reverend Norb's voice, though.
(Hey, I was at this show! 1999 Cedarfest in Minneapolis - http://members.tripod.com
Overall, this is a solid punk mix that reminds me of how I used to tell Dan, "I liked the punk stuff but could do without the ska bullshit." Stupid bad ska made me ignore real roots reggae for years out of spite. . . I might have been more fun in college if I hadn't been so closed-minded. Ah well. At some point in the future I was be telling Dan, "I like the punk stuff but could do without all the metal bullshit."
The Bouncing Souls ate all the Chicken in a Biskit! Which coincides with my college-era obsession with those things.
"Ever Get That 'Chased by Nazis' Feeling?"
Track list:
Side A
1. Rancid - The Harder They Come (live)
2. The Vindictives - Rocks in My Head
3. Dropkick Murphys - Boys on the Docks
4. Rocket from the Crypt - Don't Darlene
5. Showoff - Bulley
6. The Cherry Poppin' Daddies - Shake Your Lovemaker
7. The Queers - I Met Her at the Rat
8. Skankin' Pickle - I Missed the Bus (live)
9. MU330 - Stuff
10. Screeching Weasel - Love
11. The Bouncing Souls - Say Anything
12. No Empathy - Oi Across America (live)
13. Mustard Plug - Beer (Song)
14. Union 13 - Roots Radicals
15. Boris the Sprinkler - Girls Like You
16. The Goops - Vulgar Appetites
17. The Mr. T. Experience - Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend
18. Nobodys - D.U.M.B.-er
19. Boris the Sprinkler - SIde 2
Side B.
1. The Bouncing Souls - East Coast! Fuck You!
2. F.O.C. - Northside Out
3. Gotohells - I Wanna Be a Ramone
4. The Skatalites - You're Wondering Now
5. Screeching Weasel - Experience the Ozzfish
5. The Pietasters - Out All Night
7. The Blue Meanies - Yellin' in My Ear
8.Showoff - Marilyn Hanson
9. Skankin' Pickle - I'm in Love with a Girl Named Spike
10. Rancid - Just a Feeling
11. Rancid - Someone's Gonna Die
12. Goldfinger - I Need to Know
13. Three Days - Jet Boy, Jet Girl
14. Screeching Weasel - I Wanna Be With You Tonight
15. NOFX - Murder the Government
16. Nobodys w/ Joe Queer - Scarred by Love
17. The Pietasters - Freak Show
18. 88 Fingers Louie - I Hate Myself
19. Chixdiggit - 20 Times
20. Showoff - Gone
21. The Bouncing Souls - Shark Attack
22. Screeching Weasel - Runaway
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