Month: December 2012

Iowa Beef Experience – Jubilix 7″

Got busy with the Holidays, specifically Xmas so it’s been quiet at the Relics.  Got my son here, getting to spend our first Christmas together in 10 years (we spend summers together).  He wanted a white Christmas, which ended up happening in a light spitting kinda way, but on the Wednesday before, we had a blizzard so there was a good deal of snow on the ground.  He keeps me up to date with the rap/hip-hop scene as that’s his musical direction although I caught him singing a Frank Sinatra tune, which goes to show that he likes a mixed bag like his old man.

wowDon’t know what movie this is, wish I did, but damn they can do some things with CGI. I know a lot of people hate the whole computer animation thing.  Really appreciate all forms of special effects and/or animation, it’s art right? With the Christmas you get bombarded with shit tons of “classics”, but of note is all those old killer stop/action animation movies.  Love that stuff and not just because of reminding me of my childhood, but I can just groove to the skill and artistry.

IBE-J1Another one of those ones added to the fold, solely for the artwork, not ever having heard of the band. Talk about Rosie the Rivetter. I can’t begin to repeat myself enough when I talk about how important cover art is to a record.  You could tack this to the wall, never listen to the record and get enjoyment out of it.  In this case the wax doesn’t disappoint either, AmRep, Touch & Go worship to the extreme.  A Killdozer meets Jesus Lizard-ish vibe was my first thought.  This is where punk ended up for those who never lost the ability to be snotty and noisy.  There is a Steve Albini connection and this was released on Sympathy For the Record Industry in 1991…it’s all there set in it’s setting…hahaha.  Their album Personalien is really good, maybe better than these two tunes.  I had a link to it on some now dead blog but the link is gone, as well it should (I suppose) as you can support the band (I assume) by getting it from iTunes (the Tao of music industry these days). The two tunes on this 7″ aren’t there for now so here they are, for now.

Jubilix

Nitro Burning Funny Cow

For shit’s and grins, found their first 7″ on the fucking tube as well…

Assück / O.L.D. (Old Lady Drivers) split 7″

Was swapping emails with an old buddy of mine, Bob (Lack Of Interest / Deep Six Records) found out another old buddy of ours, Ron Kuka (him and Bob were tight) had died of cancer last year. Kicking myself because I had been meaning to get in touch with him for a long while. Bob, Ron and I went to Luther Burbank Junior High School together back in the early 80’s, but unfortunately those two went on to the other high school in Burbank. We managed to stay in touch pretty well though through our mutual love of extreme music. In high school I was more involved in drinking beer and really I was a pussy compared to those guys because they were going to shows every weekend. And they would go anywhere, sometimes real nasty parts of LA, to see bands. I think they even got mugged/jumped a couple of times but that didn’t stop them. I have a few cassette of live shows they recorded. I don’t think I ever went to a show with those two, but I do remember hitting up record stores with them all over SoCal. Fast forward to college, for me, from 87-93, and I’m still in touch with mostly Ron, not sure what Bob was doing, other than working at the same place he probably works today. I would come down from Humboldt to visit my Mom and would stop in to see Ron every so often, we both shared an affinity for the best Mother Nature could provide. I used to send him care packages from up North. When I used to visit we would kick it in his room, smoke a doob, listen to music and he would dub tapes for me.  I’ll never forget when he played this for me… Fear Of God – As Statues Fell. He was single-handedly responsible for enlightening me to Excel, Dead Horse, Tankard, Napalm Death, Neanderthal, Infest, Extreme Noise Terror, Chaos UK, Electro Hippies, Pungent Stench, No For An Answer, Attitude Adjustment, Spastic Blur, Wiermacht, Heresy, Stark Raving Mad, Hirax, F.C.D.N Tormentor…shit the list goes on and on, I was just reading the names off the cassette I still have.  Really good times, you know the care free variety, where all that matters is what you’re doing at that moment. Time gets away from you though, I got graduated, got married and moved to San Diego so we stopped having those visits, it’s a shame because he was one hell of a guy. A tall glass of water and a wide cup of coffee to you Ron.

 

ASSUCK & O.L.D. split 7''ep 1990 (1)Other than Fear of God the one release that Ron turned me onto, that hit me the hardest, was the Assück / Old Lady Drivers split.  Released in 1991, I’m positive that’s when I first heard it.  Old Lady Drivers is a REAL trip of a band, but unfortunately I never really followed up on listening to more of their stuff (I’m changing that now).  Assuck, on the other hand, I ended up getting all of their records I could find and have even posted at least one here at MR.  One of my favorite bands ever, combining incredible musicianship with “deep” lyrics, I’m sure that some of my hearing damage is a result of listening to them at ungodly volume levels.  Both bands are worth looking into if you’re into anything hard, I’ve labelled them as “post-hardcore”, but in this case that really just means some whacked out form of grindcore.  Don’t let that dissuade you though, this is the real deal, not some washed out crap for the masses.

One Way System – Not Your Enemy b/w Shut Up

The wife is in the process of quitting smoking, so crankiness is sometimes the norm at my place.  I, on the other hand, am not.  My cousin was saying that when she and her husband tried to quit at the same time, it was very nearly (items were stuffed into bags and packing was done) grounds for divorce.  17 hours later they picked up a pack at the store, shared a smoke and were instantly in love again.  Just not feeling the urge to quit, despite the COPD diagnosis.  Shit even when “We (I) admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable” it still took me years to get off the hooch. Something has to snap in that fucked up brain, ya know.  Coffee and smokes are all there is left. I suppose when someone says I got the “C” word, I’ll have to, but people around will just say, “he had plenty of opportunities to quit.” Found out yesterday from an old buddy of mine, that a mutual friend, they were tight, died last year from cancer.  Bummed me out because I had been meaning to get in touch with him for a while now.  This guy my wife and I know here in town, actually worked at the same place for a couple of years, really a nice guy, just died after a long and ongoing addiction to pharmaceuticals…36. Went to the funeral and there were even a few people there who deal in Rx, that’s nice isn’t it, checking out their handiwork. He had plenty of chances and plenty of people pulling for him, so what can you say except sometimes life gets the better of you. One pill too many. He hadn’t talked to his family in a while, I guess they gave up on him years ago, you know how that goes, the lying, cheating and stealing. I looked at his Mom and felt horrible for her, as things were bad between them when he died and now she would never have the chance to make things right. I told my wife that night that we needed to go to bed every night trying to make sure we’re right with the world and the people we love.  On a positive note, just found out that if I die while working for this employer, the wife will get $50k.

Back before The Cure, there was Easy Cure (before that Malice and before that Obelisk)…just saying, in case anyone is listening.  The Cure were in edgy band in their beginnings, it’s amazing how so many bands evolve into something more passive and palatable for the masses.  Does that say something about people in general and how they grow older? Anyway. just because I think it’s worth a listen, here’s the Easy Cure 1978 demo…

 

See the Children

Meethook

I Want to Be Old

Listen

Need My-Self

Oh what the hell, another later Cure incarnation, with a postman on vocals, Cult Hero…look it up, interesting.

I’m A Cult Hero

I Dig You

My Grandpa sent me a joke…When asked what steps he would take in the event of a fire, the man said, fucking big ones…hahaha.

Way back when I posted some mug shots of folks over the years showing how they had deteriorated over time from drug use. There’s a new I one of my friends posted on FB that will just blow your mind, in the form of Faces of Meth. Show it to your kids.

Was going through my 7″s trying to get stuff to sell on ebay (amazing how much stuff I have that sucks, in my opinion), so I can afford to buy more and ran across this one. Don’t remember getting it and I knew nothing about the band, so gave it a listen…not bad. One Way System, it turns out, have been around since the early 80’s. English street punk (you learn something new everyday, according to the article, Discharge falls into that category…hmmm) is what they’re labeled as. This here is the band’s 2nd to last release 1998 and is the first one that features a different singer, still not bad.  Isn’t mind blowing or anything, but satisfies that rock n roll need.

 

Not Your Enemy

Shut Up

From their first appearance on the “A Country Fit For Heroes” in 1982
Jerusalem

For purposes of comparison here’s the first 7″, I’m like that…

 

stab the judge

riot torn city

me and you

jackie was a junkie [live]

Not sure when this vid was recorded, very pristine mohawk…

The B-52s – Studio Jam bootleg CD

Was fooled by THIS VIDEO, thumbs up to the CGI masters, so I had to find the real Bruce Lee again. God I was such a fan of his growing up, even though he’d been dead for a few years before I ever saw one of his flicks.  My buddy Kevin Amos and I used to “train” together as kids, hand to hand, nunchuka, sword, staff, whatever.  They were showing other Chinese stuff on what was called Kung Fu Theater, classics like “Master of the Flying Guillotine” and “The One Armed Boxer”.  Go figure that these days two of my favorite actors are Jet Li and Jackie Chan. The flick they did together The Forbidden Kingdom was masterful and the fight scene that features them pitted against each other is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The white kid (whose probably 30) did a great job.  I should have been the white (err, mutt) kid in that.

DSC03053-001My buddy over at Fugitive Equilibrium, mentioned him and his place several times over the years, a master of the written word and a living database for extreme music, always has something going on.  Another one of the few bloggers left, check my blogroll if you don’t believe me.  FE is the real deal though and has been the cause for several purchases of my own.  I’ve had this one tagged to mention for some time now, so it’s one of his older posts, but never-the-less an over-the-top piece of ear candy. This time around he takes u on a journey to a band called Subsistencia. Take a minute to marvel at the fabric of woven words he has in homage to the band. Then just to give you a taste here, you can get the whole thing there…

b-52s studio jam 1978 frontThis here was just one of those things that had to be done. Everywhere you go the link is dead, there was a copy originally at Viva Les Bootlegs, an invaluable site, but the links are dead. What good is art if can’t be experienced.  There is a “vid” on utube that has the whole recording HERE thanx to Viacobra23, but my program for ripping off of utube would not work. Would have been a bummer anyway because I would have had to convert, edit and tag it anyway. So I contacted said utuber and we got something worked out. This is one of the best live recordings ever of a one of kind band, long before they got too popped out and got lost in a sea of bad music.  Did my 52’s schtick, a while back, but wanted to add that I lost interest in what the band was doing in probably about 1984 or so…they had become so poppily-polished that the rawness that attracted me to them in the first place was completely gone. This is an utterly out-fucking-standing recording of the band pretty early on in the game (1978?). Go to Viva Les bootlegs to get more info in the post and comments, plus they have several other B-52’s bootlegs (and a shit ton of other stuff, if the links aren’t dead, but you can request re-ups I assume).
Planet Claire
52 Girls
6060-842
Devil In My Car
Hero Worship
Lava
Running Around
Dance This Mess Around
Rock Lobster
Private Idaho
Strobe Light


Here’s a very early vid (1978)…

Dengue Fever – Tiger Phone Card b/w Genjer Genjer 7″

Just picked up this 7″, had a search (with email reminders, you know what I mean if you’re an ebay-head) going for it for quite some time, but was waiting for the right price and a new copy. Dengue Fever (named after a mosquito borne virus, also known as breakbone fever) are this psychedelic indie thing with some hardcore 60’s Cambodian Khmer pop thrown in, or is it vice versa. Way out of charted territory for me, but VERY diggable. The singer, Chhom Nimol has this completely mesmerizing voice that takes you off on a trip to far away lands. The guitarist, Zac is an old college schoolmate from Humboldt State (his brother Ethan, on the organ, may have gone there too). The bass player, Senon, also went to Humboldt, but I’ve known him since about kindergarten when we played AYSO soccer at Fairfax High in LA on the weekends. Funny small world thing, was my first day at Humboldt, I was in the quad of the Sunset (where I lived my first year) and Redwood dorms, talking to Gage, whom I had just met (but still friends to this day), and all of a sudden this 6’6″ dreadlocked giant come up and says “hey Justin!” At the time I was sporting the bald head, bomber jacket look and I figured I was going to get accused of being some kind of nazi skin (yeah my dark skin and obviously mutt appearance didn’t dissuade some people). The big smile on his face told me this was a friendly encounter and it turns out it was Senon. We hadn’t seen each other in 6 years, since I stopped playing soccer at Fairfax. One of the cool people I have ever known. Anyway the rest of the band is Paul Smith on drums and David Ralicke on brass, they do a bang up job. Was thinking about rippin the 7″ and posting it but it is readily available from the band. Up to the plate is utube and the folks who upload this kind of stuff. Found live versions of both tunes. Dig it don’t, you at least have to try to educate yourself…