New job is still kicking my ass, but hopefully this post will last you a few days –
VARIOUS ARTISTS - “Live From The Masque”, Vols. 1-3″ (1977/8?)
The Masque was ground zero for the original Hollywood punk scene, existing in a bombed-out concrete space reminiscent of today’s L.A. underground music nexus The Smell. All the heavy hitters of the old-school scene played at the Masque: Germs, The Zeros, Black Randy and the Metrosquad, The Dickies, The Bags — the list is looooooong, and you can hear some of the result of their clatter on this three-volume live set. These CDs were put out in ‘96, and nowadays what’s in-print is a single-disc volume called “Live At The Masque: The Definitive Collection” — but looking at info available on Amazon, it says “Recorded live at the Elks Lodge, Los Angeles, CA on February 24 & 25, 1978″ — which clearly would not be The Masque. Dunno if any of the tracks on these three discs below are the same as what’s on the “Definitive Collection”, but in the end, who cares? All that matters is that the downloads below constitute a wiiiiiiiide slab of whatchawant.
Again, sorry for the delay in posting time — I’ve been swamped like mad at my new job, plus I’ve been taking some time to make more found footage music videos.
HERBIE HANCOCK - Live, Nice, France, 07.21.1971
Striking out on his own after leaving Miles Davis’ group in the late 1960s, Hancock recorded three albums in quick succession in his so-called “Mwandishi” period during the early ’70s, all heavily influenced by Davis’ electric experimentation witnessed on albums like “Bitches’ Brew.” This fantastic live set was recorded in the thick of this era.
Just did a new video for my band (Anavan). I think it’s pretty funny. You better watch it — ‘CUZ IT’S ONLY 20 SECONDS LONG!!!! So you have no excuse not to watch it, sir (or madam.)
SCRATCH ACID - Live, The Electric Banana, Pittsburgh, PA, 04.28.87
I recently heard that David Yow was hospitalized back in January from a collapsed lung after a show with Qui, the band he now sings for. Given his fire nature onstage, this comes as no surprise. Best known for his work (and onstage antics) in The Jesus Lizard, Yow first came to be known as the singer for Scratch Acid. Justin Vellucci, writing for Delusions of Adequacy, sez:
“More people have probably seen Scratch Acid cited as an influence in interviews than have actually heard the band. This is a truth probably known all too well by Touch and Go Records guru Corey Rusk, who released a compendium of the Austin, Texas outfit’s complete works under the appropriate title ‘The Greatest Gift’ in the early 1990s. The collection should have hit at just the right time: it was released as one of the band’s most noteworthy and acclaimed offspring - The Jesus Lizard - was becoming a critical darling with explosive indie rock gems like ‘Goat’ and ‘Liar’. Sadly, though, it didn’t, and the band continued to be more name-dropped than actually heard, your average scenester not realizing how much Scratch Acid laid the foundation for countless punk and post-punk acts that followed them.
In mail-order catalogues from the early-90s, Touch and Go described Scratch Acid somewhat modestly, playing them up as ‘Tex-punk if you were eating barbecue tainted with the taste of Phenobarbital.’ The description is a fitting one and hints at the dark, disorienting tone of much of the band’s output, but it doesn’t really do enough to separate Scratch Acid from its Texan noise-punk peers, The Butthole Surfers. In their early days, both bands - like fellow Texans Big Boys and others - crafted an energetic and often chaotic brand of punk rock. But, while The Butthole Surfers went on to distort the medium with surreal soundscapes and an over-the-top, crazed sense of humor, Scratch Acid took a more straight-forward route, coming up with a sound than subtly blended elements of early punk, guitar-driven rock n’ roll and rockabilly, jazz, and electric blues.”
I’m actually kinda sad that the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival hasn’t graced L.A. in a number of years now — whenever ATP announces a new lineup, Shellac usually seems to be included, and I still haven’t seen them live yet.
This is the very last album-length download I’d previously posted on my old blog, Post-Punk Junk. I’ve been reluctant to put this one up until now. When I’d originally posted it, it was downloaded 2,500 times in less than a week, and crashed the server of my web hosting company at the time. It was worth it, though!
I promise new posts will return shortly. Been dealing with new job issues — stuff that’s ultimately for the better.
PAUL STANLEY - “PEOPLE, LET ME GET THIS OFF MY CHEST” (197?-200?)
Paul Stanley needs no introduction. Every fucking song at a Kiss live show, however, seems to need one, an inane overly-rehearsed one at that, and some mad genius out there has finally made a CD-length compilation of some of the gems in the Paul Stanley Crowd Interaction canon. A good friend who’s been obsessed with Stanley’s onstage patter for years tipped me off to this one; he’s the same friend who pointed out to me that Stanley, in between songs, sounds less like the frontman for an international megaband than a shrill Christopher Street queen stuck outside a club at three in the morning, frantically searching on the wet pavement for the last few poppers that accidentally flew out of his hand onto the ground.
VARIOUS ARTISTS - NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM, 1985-1992
This, I believe, one of the very last things I had not yet re-posted from my old site (Post-Punk Junk): two CDs worth of original 8-bit NES music. With bands like Crystal Castles now very much in the forefront of hyped electronic music, I think it’s cool to hear the sounds that they heard from their childhood (and mine and probably yours as well).
Just a few of the games whose music is included here are: Blaster Master, The Legend Of Zelda, Rygar, R.C. Pro Am, Excitebike, Kid Icarus, Faxanadu, Metal Gear, Castlevania, Metriod, Clu Clu Land, Double Dragon, Ducktales, and of course, Super Mario Bros. —
04.14.08 — Still working on putting new updates for the site together, also still playing catch-up with everything else after being out of town for a month — hold tight —
Just found out about this online store called Anthology Recordings — an alternative to the iTunes Music Store and Amazon’s MP3 download options. They have exclusives in the genres of prog, punk and psych — has anybody out there bought anything from them yet?
Track listing: Gang of Four - We Live As We Dream, Alone (live, 1983)
Material - Secret Life
Scott & Beth B. - Black Box Disco
NON - Mode Of Infection
Roberto Cacciapaglia - Sweet Life
Pram - Sleepy Sweet
Alexander “Skip” Spence - Fountain
House on the Rock - Automated Music 1
Candidate - Like A Beast
Bad News - Double Entendre
The Fall - The Littlest Rebel
Locust Fudge - Cannibal Man
The Container Drivers - The Ex-Members of the Fall Club
Chris Brokaw - Bill Is Dead
Jeffrey Lewis - The Story of The Fall
Bobbie Gentry - Mississippi Delta
HAWKWIND - “SPACE ROCK FROM LONDON” aka “BBC RADIO 1 LIVE IN CONCERT (1972)
Record reviewer Alan Bragg, writing on ProgArchives.com, sez:
“Recorded for the BBC in the Paris Theatre in London, this album provides another snapshot of Space Ritual era Hawkwind, a thing which has recently become desirable. Now the 1991 album of this gig may or may not feature a mono audience recording of the exact same gig, in good SQ…. but I don’t think this is it. This album features some well sloppy mixing from the BBC, with the guitar non-existant at the start of Silver Machine, but hey, its the best live version from this era by far… Elsewhere, Dikmik (the cad) produces whistling noises over the entire album, whic hgets sickening after the third number… wheeeeeee, there he goes again. Hell’s teeth. Also, some randomer (probably DIKMik again) provides needlessly stoned backing vocals in really bad pitch. Go away, this is poor! The same idiot is heard on the Live at the Roundhouse tracks (great backing vocals on Silver Machine, shame they removed them when they made that track into a single… eh no). Actually, to digress, if the band had left the original Silver mAchine track without overdubbing in the studio, it would have been a Dawg!!!
The BBC therefor made a lumpy recording, but why was space ritual recorded on 2 seperate nights for any other reason than Hawkwind were a damned hard live band to record? Same with The Who, Cream, Pink Floyd… any good band really…”
The Gold Standard Laboratories (GSL) record label was my gateway drug into the fertile music underground of the late ’90s and early ’00s. After growing into a huge fan of the label, I eventually became friends with its owner and operator, my personal hero, Sonny Kay. This friendship also grew into a professional relationship as well, when my own band Anavan put out our first album through GSL.
I was recently very saddened to hear that after 13 years, GSL had to close its doors in October ‘07. May the memory of all of Sonny’s work putting out bands he loved not fade away —
Track listing: I Am Spoonbender - Reality Dealer
Gogogo Airheart - Sincerely P.S.
The Locust - Turning Your Merchandise Into A Ripped Wall Of Mini-Abs
Heart Of Snow - Red
400 Blows - The Beauty of Internal Darkness
The Rapture - Dumb Waiters
Le Shok - I Know You’re Ready
Lost Kids - Alive In The Snow
Dmonstrations - Polyp
The Starvations - Red Wine
Kill Me Tomorrow - I Require Chocolate
Subpoena The Past - Sphere Of Influence
The Vanishing - Cuckoo Spit
Die Princess Die - Lights of the Night
Vaz - They’ve Won
Dead and Gone - Shiny and Black
!!! - Instinct
The Convocation Of… - Beyond The Beyond
