Dickless - I'm a Man 7"

I'm a Man b/w Saddle Tramp
SP 59, released May 1990

Bo Diddly's I'm a Man has been covered so many times, never like this though. This is so brutal most purists would think its a travesty, however its anything but. The one simple riff played repetetivey sloppy over the top while Kelly Canary screams the very familiar lyrics so you can barely understand them. Saddle Tramp was included on the Sub Pop compilation The Grunge Years and is a 98 second burst of heavy brilliance. Adding to the sound is the fact that the single was recorded live on a Sanyo stereo. As Thurston Moore described Dickless, they play pure "foxcore".

Velvet Monkeys - Rock The Nation 7"

Rock The Nation b/w Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
Sub Pop SP102, released February 1991

Sub Pop Singles Club #28

This is a pretty common single for the Sub Pop Singles Club with 7000 copies pressed. The front of the sleeve shows Don Flemming, Malcom Riviera and Jay Spiegel, this is around the same time they formed their band Gumball. While the back of the sleeve shows Thurston Moore playing bass and you cant see his face but i think it might be J Mascis playing guitar. Both are really great tracks, espescially the Beatles cover.

Lonely Moans - Shoot The Cool 7"

Shoot The Cool b/w Texas Love Goat
Sub Pop SP46, released October 1989
Sub Pop Singles Club #12

Happy Birthday Joe

Joe Perry of Aerosmith is 60 today.

The Remains

The Remains were a mid 60's psychedelic garage band from Boston. I first heard them on the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era compilation with their song Don't Look Back and it quickly became one of my favourite songs on the compilation. Here ive posted a very 60's live TV performance of Diddy Wah Diddy along with studio versions of Dont Look Back, Hang on Sloopy and a cover of Like a Rolling Stone. Also their version of the garage standard I'm a Man originally by Bo Diddley is as good as youll ever hear.



Don't Look Back


Hang On Sloopy


Like A Rolling Stone


I'm A Man

Vivre Sa Vie

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux is a 1962 French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The title means "To Live Her Life: A Film in Twelve Scenes", but in the English-speaking world it was released as My Life to Live (North America) or as It's My Life (UK).

The film stars Anna Karina, Godard's then wife, as Nana, a young Parisian woman who abandons her marriage and a child in order to pursue a career as an actress. Faced with financial troubles she drifts into prostitution. Nana believes she makes this choice of her own free will, but the film emphasizes the social structure that forces the poor into such situations, and builds to a tragic conclusion.

Minutemen - Paranoid Time EP

The Paranoid Time EP (1980) is the first ever Minutemen realese and the second SST release after the Nervous Breakdown EP by Black Flag. Seven tracks. Less than seven minutes. This is punk rock.

Track Listing
1. Validation
2. The Maze
3. Definitions
4. Sickles And Hammers
5. Fascist
6. Joe McCarthy's Ghost
7. Paranoid Chant

Recovery

Recovery was a Saturday morning music television program on ABC TV. It was on air each week right after Rage. It ran between 1996 until it was axed in 2000. Ive posted a few clips here of live performances on the show. The performance by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is probably the greatest thing ever captured on film. Followed by an awesome display of trailer trash boogie by Southern Culture On The Skids. And finally J Mascis alone and amazing with just an acoustic guitar.

Stranger In My Own Home Town

I just heard Stranger In My Own Home Town by Elvis for the first ever time today. Im usually only interested by his early rock and roll material but was really impressed with this song. It was originally written by Percy Mayfield (who also wrote Hit The Road Jack) and recorded by him back in 1964. Elvis then recorded his version of the song in 1969 and was released on his Back In Memphis record. Elvis sounds so suave yet possessed with attitude as he belts out this bluesy version of a great song. The band also grooves along and just basically sound fantastic.

Maybellene

Maybellene is Chuck Berry's first ever released single. The song was adapted from the traditional fiddle tune "Ida Red". It was released in July 1955 and reached number 5 on the Billboard rock charts and was a number 1 R&B hit. Rolling Stone magazine wrote of it "Rock & roll guitar starts here."

Here Chuck Berry performs his song to a very sedate and formal crowd as he moves around the stage with his famous moves which comes across quite funny and odd looking.


And here the Replacements perform the song live quite early in their career back in 1981. Its loose, its drunken, its sloppy and singer Paul Westerberg barely even knows the lyrics as he makes them up as he goes.

Rust Never Sleeps

Released in 1979 Rust Never Sleeps is Neil Young's music documentary of his October 22nd, 1978 concert performance at the Cow Palace. It contains only concert footage, half of which is Neil Young solo and acoustic, while the other half is electric and loud featuring of course his long time backing band Crazy Horse. It is credited as being directed by Bernard Shakey which is in fact just a pseudonym of Young (who is looking a very sickly thin at the time of these performances). As well as releasing this Young also put out the acclaimed album Rust Never Sleeps as well as the double LP Live Rust from the same tour. Here I feature clips of the songs After The Goldrush, Thrasher and Cortez The Killer. The first two being very haunting solo performances while Cortez is an extended jam with his full band.

Muddy Waters at Newport

For many back in the early '60s, this was their first exposure to live recorded blues, and it's still pretty damn impressive some 40-plus years down the line. Muddy, with a band featuring Otis Spann, James Cotton, and guitarist Pat Hare, lays it down tough and cool with a set that literally had 'em dancing in the aisles by the set closer, a rippling version of "Got My Mojo Working," reprised again in a short encore version. Kicking off the album with a version of "I've Got My Brand on You" that positively burns the relatively tame (in comparison) studio take, Waters heads full bore through impressive versions of "Hoochie Coochie Man," Big Bill Broonzy's "Feel So Good," and "Tiger in Your Tank." A great breakthrough moment in blues history, where the jazz audience opened its ears and embraced Chicago blues. allmusic.com

I'm not living my life to be a real cheap fucker like you, copout!

They came, they saw, and they conquered — sort of. Never topping the charts, nor possessing a huge following, San Francisco's Flipper, even in the '90s alt-rock sweepstakes, would still be considered a fringe act. But, in 1982, they were the toast of rock critics across the country with their post-hardcore punk masterpiece "Sex Bomb." Clocking in at over seven minutes, possessing one riff played over and over (and sloppier and sloppier), with vocalist Will Shatter screaming rather than singing (total lyrics: "She's a sex bomb/My baby/yeah"), it was a remarkable record: loud, proud, defiantly obnoxious, and relentlessly dumb. But in it's own gleeful and intentionally moronic way it was (and remains) a perfect record.

With "Sex Bomb" providing the impetus, Shatter and fellow Flippers, vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, drummer Steve DePace, and guitarist Ted Falconi, emerged from the fractious muck of the California hardcore punk scene (Shatter and DePace played in the Bay Area hardcore band Negative Trend in the late '70s) with a crushingly loud, slowed-down sound that resembled the Stooges at their most drug-addled (see "We Will Fall" from the first Stooges LP). Flipper didn't care if you loved or loathed them (most everyone loathed them), they simply played until you couldn't stand it anymore. There was something wonderfully uncomplicated about this attitude, which is probably the reason that Flipper, despite being seen as a one-shot band, had a career that lasted longer than 15 minutes.

Their debut album, Album — Generic Flipper, included "Sex Bomb" along with a handful of good-to-great songs about anonymity and desperation that were not all-bleak, nor without moments of humor. In fact, Flipper may have been the first hardcore/post-hardcore band to essay life-affirming messages on its album (no matter how tongue-in-cheek it might sound). So, although there's a track called "Life Is Cheap," there is also "Life" which offers the sentiment: "I too have sung death's praises/But I'm not gonna sing that song anymore." Adding the oft-stated sentiment, "Life is the only thing worth living for." Hmmm. How, uh, un-punk.

With much of the rock press singing their praises (and deservedly so), Flipper went on to demi-celebrity status as the reigning kings of American underground rock, for a few years. They never released anything as mind-blowingly good as Album, but until they split up in 1987, the music was usually very good. Precipitating their breakup was Shatter's death from a heroin overdose, with the remaining members spending the next half-dozen years stepping in-and-out of music. In 1992, Flipper fan and American Recordings label honcho Rick Rubin encouraged the remaining members to record a new album. The subsequent effort, American Grafishy, only hinted at their greatness. Their comeback attempt notwithstanding, Flipper's greatness lies in their ability to say "let's rock our way." allmusic.com

I've Got Nothing To Do

I was all dressed up like Elvis from HELL!

(I'm Sorry Mamma) I'm a Wild One

Minneapolis-St. Paul was an amazing place for underground rock 'n' roll in the 1980s and Twin/Tone Records was there to capture nearly all of it. Co-founded in 1977 by Paul Stark and longtime Replacements fix-it-man, Peter Jesperson, Twin/Tone all but documented the Minneapolis scene. The label peaked in the mid-'80s when The Mats went semi-large nationally and Soul Asylum followed closely behind. Sure, there were important bands not on Twin/Tone, Hüsker Dü most famously. But, no other label had so many essential Twin Cities acts: The Suburbs, Babes In Toyland, Poster Children,The Replacements, Soul Asylum, and The Jayhawks.

Twin/Tone went into hibernation in the mid-'90s, about the time the initial wave of indie-to-major signings ran its course. The label failed, not because of a lack of quality product, but due to simple economics. Said Stark, "Unless you were on one of the two coasts and had connections to major label distribution, there was nothing you could do. You need to go out to lunch and spend face time with people that are going to influence, whether it be press or radio or distribution, stuff like that. I just never really cared to play that game. I was more interested in developing groups."

The Replacements
Somethin' To Du
'Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash' - 1981



Babes In Toyland
He's My Thing
'Spanking Machine' - 1990



The Suburbs
Tape Your Wife To The Ceiling
"Credit In Heaven" - 1981



Das Damen
Noon Daylight
'Mousetrap' - 1989

Mudhoney...leaves a taste of evil!

Dinosaur Jr. and Robert Smith, May 6 1989

Forget the Swan

Dinosaur Jr.
Metro Theatre
March 11, 2010

I went to the Metro Theatre last night to see one of my favorite bands of all time, the influential Dinosaur Jr. I was very excited because I was about to see the original line up of J Mascis on guitar/vocals, Lou Barlow on bass/vocals and Murph on drums.

Dinosaur Jr. were largely responsible for returning lead guitar to indie rock and, along with their peers the Pixies, they injected late-'80s alternative rock with monumental levels of pure guitar noise. – allmusic.com

Dinosaur Jr formed in 1983 in Amherst Massachusetts but were known simply as Dinosaur until after the release of their debut album in 1985 when another band with the same name sued them. The original band then released another 2 albums after which Barlow was fired by Mascis in 1989. Murph then left dinosaur jr in 1993 and Mascis finally ended the band in the late 90’s after another couple of albums. The three of them continued on in respective solo careers or other bands until Mascis decided to reform the original lineup in 2006. Since then the band has performed a successful tour and released 2 critically acclaimed albums Beyond (2007) and Farm (2009).

When I arrived at the Metro one of the first things in noticed was that much of the crowd including myself were not actually old enough to remember or even have been alive when the original line up for dinosaur jr were playing together. The celebrities were also out with the singer of Australian punk band Radio Birdman, Rob Younger in attendance.

Right on 10.30 Dinosaur Jr walked out on stage as planned. J Mascis came out and stood in front of 3 huge Marshall stacks and from the first song they played Thumb they showed that its true when they are described as one of the loudest bands on the planet.

They performed songs from their entire back catalogue, they didn’t just promote their latest record. Their songs all sounded awesome live, to be expected from a band like dinosaur jr. Their current single Over It was one of the best received songs by the audience as well as being one of the best performed.

Other highlights included the track The Lung from their album You’re Living All Over Me (1987). Also Feel The Pain was played with so much power and intensity (surprising as it is from the Mascis only era).

The high point of the night I feel was when they played the song everyone was waiting for, the iconic Freak Scene. The crowd went crazy during the line “Cause when I need a friend its still you.” They followed that up with the second of two Lou Barlow sung songs of the night Lose. This turned into a monumental jam session that seemed like they didn’t want to stop playing after which the set had ended.

They returned for an encore after the crowd was clearly after more and played Kracked and then finally ended with an incredible performance of Sludgefeast.

Throughout the night Mascis shredded and wailed on his guitar. Murph pounded as hard as anyone I’ve seen on his simple drum kit. While Lou Barlow thrashed at his bass like no one I’ve seen as if it was a guitar. All this became evident throughout the show because it was the most guitar tuning and drum kit tightening I have witnessed. The instruments were so loud that they drowned out Mascis’ high pitched Neil Young-esque vocals and angsty lyrics.

The band didn’t talk much to the crowd as is their style. They seem to prefer to just come out on stage and play their music which is fine by me. There was one mumbled “Thank you for coming” from J Mascis about half way through the set. Lou Barlow paid more attention to the crowd and had a bit more to say in response to his sizeable fan base.

The concert was one of the best I’ve been to, as it appeared to be to a lot of the die hard fans buying merchandise, singing along and dancing to the tunes. J Mascis is a modern day guitar hero. The sounds he gets out of his cool looking fender jazzmaster are incredible. His extended solos were amazingly melodic yet at the same time pure distorted noise. I hope they return to Sydney in the not to distant future because I will definitely see them play live again.

Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend.

Top 10 Album Covers

Mudhoney
Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988)









Husker Du
Zen Arcade (1984)









Rolling Stones
Sticky Fingers (1971)









Joy Division
Unknown Pleasures (1979)









Frank Zappa
Hot Rats (1969)









Sonic Youth
EVOL (1986)









Ramones
Ramones (1976)









The Clash
London Calling (1979)









Iggy Pop
The Idiot (1979)









David Bowie
Hunky Dory (1971)

Waiting for a girl who's got curlers in her hair
Waiting for a girl she has no money anywhere
We get buses everywhere
Waiting for a factory girl

Waiting for a girl and her knees are much too fat
Waiting for a girl who wears scarves instead of hats
Her zipper's broken down the back
Waiting for a factory girl

Waiting for a girl and she gets me into fights
Waiting for a girl we get drunk on Friday night
She's a sight for sore eyes
Waiting for a factory girl

Waiting for a girl and she's got stains all down her dress
Waiting for a girl and my feet are getting wet
She ain't come out yet
Waiting for a factory girl