LAUGHBOY

It's fun to watch a band develop their sound in the live realm. When I first started seeing Laughboy play, their songs were masked by opaque, blunt-force hardcore noise overload common to many young bands. Over the course of a couple years' worth of shows, a unique sound started to take shape. They've been billed as 'cosmic' or 'psychedelic' hardcore, and those descriptions seem apt enough on this cassingle released by Spotted Race. The three short songs contain frantic vocal howls cast amongst psychedelic guitar reverb, buttressed by a murky low end that hits like an asteroid collision. Whether on tape or on your computer, the songs have the raw, shitty hardcore fidelity you all know and love. Have a listen to the a-side, which personally I can't get enough of:

On April 13 Laughboy will be playing the Midwest Zine Fest aftershow with fellow C-U locals Chain's Gang and Unnerve. Like the Fest itself, the show will be at the Urbana Independent Media Center. Show starts at 8:00, fb details here for those who seek them.

nothing like being with bitter fools

VA - Not Normal Presents: Welcome to 2013

Fuck. Where do I start with this comp? Ralph really outdid himself on this one. It's got nearly everybody on it: twenty-eight songs in forty minutes by seventeen bands from Chicago, the Midwest, the USA, THE WORLD. The record wastes no time, with an exciting start by Basque punks Hondartzako Hondakinak. I'd never heard of them before but I'm glad that's no longer the case. Further on in the comp the sounds run the whole spectrum, from the psycho-saturated ramonescore of Cülo to the power-pop punk of Tenement to the cosmic hardcore of NASA Space Universe to the angular UK palpitations of Good Throb to the raging Spanish-language thrash of Porkeria to the Minutemen-invoking funkiness of Big Crux ... if I don't stop here I'll just end up listing all the bands. But really, every cut is crucial. I should mention that this is Ooze's vinyl debut -- but don't worry, they haven't cleaned their sound up one bit.

Sample the tunes here, then buy a copy at Not Normal. For your own damn sake don't sleep on this one; the wax sounds great and it comes with a full-size 20-page booklet with band infos, lyrics, and some sick artwork. For what you're getting the price is a STEAL. 

Gas Rag - Gas Rag CS [2013]

Saw these dudes open for Crazy Spirit back in January, and their set was early enough in the lineup that it didn't suffer from the ridiculous overcrowding that came after. Besides that they were one of the highlights of the night. Rapid, nihilistic drug-punk songs about the drone war and other things that tug at your angry damaged heartstrings. The six songs thrash by in less than five minutes that I know you can spare, punk. Give it a spin; if you dig it, email durso1753@gmail.com for a copy of the tape.

War pervert

CHAIN'S GANG

Debut cassette from this new-ish band from Urbana featuring members of Kowabunga! Kid, Witch in Her Tomb, and Horrible Things, to name a few of many. The first half of the set consists of raging hardcore perfectly suited for getting beat up by 10-year-olds. On the flip side the band plunges into a slowed-down, wah'd-out pharmaceutical nightmare that will have you spitting out all yr pills. These songs, especially the title track, have been crashing my daydreams since I first heard them. Nerds beware.

Chain's Gang is out on Crippled Sound, which is run by the guitarist. Website hasn't been updated in a while but you can probably email him about snagging a copy of this. Or, if you're a central Illinoisan, get it at one of their upcoming shows:
March 29: Six bands / Five bucks @ Black Sheep Cafe in Springfield, IL
April 13: Midwest Zine Fest After Show @ IMC in Urbana, IL

Broken glass, beat yr ass

re-up'd: LIVE OOZE

So this is my penance for missing these dudes opening for Skrapyard and Iceage this weekend (Iceage played a pretty sweet set, though). Ooze is a band in Chicago/NWI. I know the guitar player was in the Outs and Night Fever but that's just off the top of my head. Oh, the singer played in Raw Nerve. Anyway, this is a somewhat hi-fi recording of what was something like their third show. Seven songs in just under nine minutes. What can I say? It's hardcore punk played by people who evidently breathe the stuff. Comparisons to Brown Sugar wouldn't be unwarranted; Ooze has a similarly swinging rhythm, and the instruments are played in a way that harkens back to older styles of rock and roll (they open the set with 'California Sun,' à la the Dictators/Ramones) while maintaining a manic hardcore pace. If you've seen these dudes play, you know to be excited about them. The audio comes from the video below. Have a look and see mah boy Vincent of Horrible Things repping the Easter shirtage thoughought. Fullscreen that beautiful 720p shit, why don't you:

For the sake of convenience I ripped the audio from this tape and broke up the tracks. Though I don't know what any of them are called. The cover art is from the gig flyer.

Ooze roolze

re-up'd: Sonic Youth - Hold That Tiger [1987]

Quick, here's a Sonic Youth boot some of you maybe don't have. Recorded at the Metro in Chicago on October 14, 1987. Thanks to quality mic-placement, this is some real clanging, articulately shredded-up EVOL and Sister material from what is maybe my favorite period of this band. People forget Sonic Youth was a punk band, and this gig demonstrates it. The version of 'Death Valley '69' rages so hard that you forget it's missing Lydia Lunch's vocal part. Following a soaring version of 'Pacific Coast Highway' is a Ramones coverset encore.

The Japanese text on the cover inexplicably reads 'my mother went shopping.' Perhaps the band was studying up for their semi-upcoming 1988 tour of Japan.

SY concert archive entry for this gig
"I have no desire to fuck Jessica Hahn but I would like to kill Jim Bakker"

re-up'd: Hüsker Dü - Metal Circus [1983]

As you probably know, I get the name of this site from the most famous album by St. Paul, Minnesota's Hüsker Dü, as they are one of my favorite bands of ever. Zen Arcade was part of a paradigm shift in punk and hardcore, as the Hüskers, alongside Black Flag, the Minutemen, Sonic Youth, other SST bands, and countless others the world over were permanently expanding the creative capacity of counter-culture music.

Ten months before Zen Arcade was released, they put out the Metal Circus EP. It is the pivot around which the band changed its direction, from the 'ultracore' of their earlier singles and albums toward the stuff that got them remembered (and ultimately destroyed by a major label). You can read a 1982 interview with the band in the second issue of the D.C. zine Thrillseeker -- their answers are very foretelling.

As for the songs, this is when Hüsker Dü really hit their stride. The 'Minnesota guitar snowstorm' sound is fully operational, and the record is filled with soaring harmonics that let melody sneak into unexpected places. 'Real World' is a folk tune for the disillusioned rebel ("you're not a cop or politician, you're a person too -- you can sing any song you want, but you're still the same"), but it somehow sounds hopeful rather than cynical. The next two are some great Reagan-punk sort of songs about coping with impending nuclear apocalypse. The first side finishes with the boozer's lament "First of the Last Calls," borne from guitarist Bob Mould's own troubles with drink.

The the second side could be read as the thematic conclusion of the problems brought about in the first. After the brief whirlwind of "Lifeline," in which Bob screams about falling into the abyss, the abyss is reached. "Diane" starts. Greg Norton's bass churns out ominous chords, and Grant Hart drums along as he sings the true story of a woman raped and killed in Minnesota, from the p.o.v. of the perpetrator. It's a haunting electric murder ballad, a apt climax to the five songs that preceded it. The record ends with "Out on a Limb," a Sabbath-y dance of precarity. Listening to the words or reading along to this EP, there's a sense of narrative progression. Once they were able to show themselves capable of doing a concept record, they went all the way with it and ended up with the 'concept double album' that followed it in '84.

In my upload I included four outtakes from the Metal Circus sessions, which are of variable fidelity. However, they are some fierce punk tunes. Hüsker Dü are one of the few bands whose rejects are practically as good as the stuff they commit to wax. One of these, "Standing By the Sea," would be attempted again on Zen Arcade.

Finally, if you're still reading along with this, you're probably a big fan of the Hüskers yourself. So you might appreciate this graphic about the cover art, if you haven't seen it already.

graphic belongs to Patrick Smith

The inscription on the A-side reads, "That old stainless charity. If you could see me now, Shirley." On the B-side it's "Falling from grace with the goose; Howard Hughs, a wing, a prayer, (see below)."

Buy Metal Circus on insound
Discogs vinyl link
I like to protest but I'm not sure what it's for

re-up'd: End Result - Ward EP [1985]

Chicago punk in the '80s had its fair share of weirdos, but End Result in particular pushed the envelope of what people would tolerate hearing. Not quite as blatantly crass as, say, the Mentally Ill, but musically these Southside punks could really test your patience. Don't let the more-or-less straightforward opening track deceive you; the Ward EP quickly devolves into an unrighteous mess of horns, semi-competent guitar squall, and psychotically howled vocals. The bizarre rendition of Petula Clark's 'Don't Fall Asleep in the Subway' must be heard to be (dis)believed. 

from Maximumrocknroll #3

From Roctober:

Chicago's End Result was a multi racial experimental No Wave band born out of the early 80s hardcore scene. They managed to limp all the way to the end of the 80s with a rotating cast (at one point they advertised they were seeking a "singer with a hatred of music") built around guitarist [Alan] Jones. Perhaps their greatest legacy is that they paved the way for No Wave/artfuck bands presenting themselves to an all-ages, hardcore/punk audience, something that defined the Chicago underground of the 90s (Milk of Burgundy, Skingraft, etc.). Their odd songs (a straightforward tune about amputation wasn't atypical) were released on Articles Of Faith's Wasteland label, and on several important Midwestern hardcore/punk comps, resulting in fans of boundary-pushing gravitating towards them, including Steve Albini and Sonic Youth. No child of privilege, Jones lived in a mission for a while, and turned lemons into an odd tasting lemonade by briefly making the mission's basement a site for punk shows.

End Result fit into the Chicago punk puzzle somewhere between early Silver Abuse and ONO. Here's a video of them circa 1984:

I know it was my fault, but I'm gonna take it out on you

re-up'd: Big Black - Sound of Impact [1986]

This is probably thee best recording of Big Black, and just goes to show what an unstoppable force they were as a live act. It was recorded in 1986 In Minneapolis, Clogland (Netherlands?), and Muncie, Indiana. There is a wealth of information available about this official 'fake bootleg' from the badass site Les Dementlieu Punk Bibliotheque, with this synopsis:

Compiled from four or five different soundboard recordings, this LP is a quality product^TM, despite appearances to the contrary. It also comes with a nifty booklet of photos and misc. crap to keep you amused when you aren't listening to the record.
This was also supposedly the cause of Big Black's break with Blast First. The idea for its release was conceived during their first visit to Europe in early 1986 (when they were being wooed by Blast First), and appeared in October or November of that year. The album was supposed to be released like a scummy bootleg--no contact info, no band name on the record, a fake record label (Walls Have Ears), in a numbered edition of 1000 copies. When that 1000 copies sold out, 500 more numbered copies were pressed with the band's permission. Then in 1990 (I think) an unnumbered and unauthorized edition of 500 was pressed, and when they started turning up in US record stores Albini threw a shitfit, and even claimed he was going to burn the $5000 Paul Smith had offered him as payment for the unauthorized repress. I don't know if Steve actually did burn the money, but he sure left Blast First in a huff, taking Big Black, Rapeman and Arsenal with him, as well as scuttling the planned Last Live video and album.

In addition, the back cover is covered in black box transcripts from planes that crashed. You can read them all at the above linked site.

The songs on this record are definitive versions; they are in just about every case superior to the studio versions. The titles are all changed, 'bootleg-style,' but if like Big Black you'll probably recognize them all. The version of 'Jordan, Minnesota,' here given as 'Toytown Daddy Oh!' is legitimately terrifying and disgusting. There's lots of good Albini stage banter and storytelling throughout, so you know you want to listen to this. Easily my favorite thing by Big Black.

Has anybody heard of the Yanomamo Indians?

re-up'd: Algebra Suicide - Real Numbers [1988]

Algebra Suicide were a post-punk duo from Chicago, active from 1983-1993. They ended up on a few international compilations in the '80s, and even made it out to Europe for a tour in 1990. This CD is two long tracks, each a live set recorded at Links Hall in 1988. It is really good. Lydia Tomkiw recites off-the-wall, strangely familiar poetry while Don Hedeker conjures ethereal accompanying textures on the guitar and administers the drum machine. Here he is saying a few words about this particular recording and performance; I'll defer to him since he says it best. Lydia left this world in 2007 after a long bout of alcoholism and declining health. You can read touching tribute to her written by Sharon Mesmer here.

This is a fantastic, mostly forgotten bit of Chicago music history. Don't put it off because of the long track lengths. See, I've given you the set list right here, so no complaining:

"Here, the only things being tortured are the lawns"
Plastic Crimewave writes about Algebra Suicide

re-up'd: Аквариум - Акустика [1982]

Here's an album I've really been digging lately. Russian folk from the last decade of the Soviet Union. Aquarium (alternately known as Akvarium) was formed in 1972 by Boris Grebenshchikov and Anatoly Gunitsky. The band spent the first decade or so of its life doing mostly apartment concerts -- house shows with high political stakes in a country where "rock and roll" needed explicit state approval to play in the official concert halls. Aquarium is much more of a folk band though, in the style of бард "bard" music, which had since the 1960s referred to original music (one name for the genre is самодеятельная песня, literally "do-it-yourself song") by musicians who worked outside the Soviet musical/cultural system. From Wikpedia:

The first six years of Aquarium's history lacked cohesion as Grebenshchikov and his various bandmates followed the Soviet equivalent of the hippie lifestyle: playing apartment jams, drinking the low-quality port wine available from the Soviet stores of the time, and intermittently travelling to remote gigs, even hitchhiking on rail freight cars.

The album Akustika was made at the start of the '80s, just before the state music industry started allowing this kind of stuff to be more widely disseminated. It contains a dozen-plus real pretty folk numbers, mostly on acoustic guitar plus bass, violin, and the occasional flute. In contrast to a lot of the kitchen-recorded stuff by Yanka Dyagileva or Grazhdanskaya Oborna, this album is fairly high-fidelity (and a lot less noisy than GrOb), thanks to Grebenshchikov's access to academic recording facilities. The songs clearly demonstrate the influence of Bob Dylan on Grebenschikov, and Allmusic associates Aquarium with the likes of Neil Young, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, as well as Dylan of course. By the second half of the decade Aquarium were selling millions of records, which speaks to the popularity they garnered in their first 15 years of existence.

Boris G. is a huge name in Russian music, and when you hear his voice and songs it's not hard to understand why. Check out this video of Aquarium in what looks like a TV performance from 1986:

I should mention that I was turned onto this stuff by fellow St. Petersburghers Sonic Death (a band I can't recommend enough), who did a few Grebenschikov songs on their Boris Session EP, released in the summer. Needless to say the material is good and their take on it makes for some righteous jams.

Buy Akustika on CD at UkrMedia
My house is already not my home

mediafire

"The file (Toothpaste [1983] Toothpaste EP.rar) violates the MediaFire Terms of Service. Due to it being distributed from your account, it has been removed. Also, a Strike has been placed against your account and can lead to a termination of service."

Yeah, well, mediafire caved long ago and this was bound to happen. They've been picking at my files for months and months. I'd been planning on a  migration to adrive or somewhere, but it's gonna take some time to gather everything I've put up thus far. That said, I can't imagine who could be legitimately making claims about that Toothpaste EP. The 'label' that released it, Schwa, was just a dude from Silver Abuse putting out SA/Toothpaste records. But none of that matters, the claim was probably made by Atlantic or 20th Century Fox or some other rotting 20th-century culture hoarder.

At least a lot of the stuff I post is freely available through bandcamp or youtube. The rest seeps through the cracks ...

VA - Busted at Oz [1981]

Okay, this was getting kind of hard to find online so post it I shall. Early document of the old Chicago punk scene, which centered around a handful of bars, such as Le Mere Vipere, Tut's, the Cubby Bear, O'Banions, and OZ, that would spin new punk and reggae records and book groups other than cover bands. Opened in 1977, OZ was the place at which many Chicagoans were introduced to the likes of the Fall, Black Flag, and Hüsker Dü (the infamous "blue paint show" was here). These songs were all recorded live over the period of March 9-11 1981. Side one opens up with the earliest recordings of Naked Raygun, back when they were a  bunch of freaks and didn't do 'woah-ohs' in their songs. Then you've got a couple tracks each by the Subverts, Strike Under, and Da, which don't appear on their records. The Silver Abuse songs include a Urinals-meets-Pere Ubu pisstake cover of Skrewdriver's "Antisocial." The two Effigies tracks are the most straightforward material on here; pretty good midtempo '80s hardcore but I prefer the weird stuff.

Anyway, I don't know if it's a matter of hometown sentimentality or what, but I return to this comp pretty often. Some people even consider it a 'classic' of sorts.

I saw a woman, gasoline, she burned herself to death

Kowabunga! Kid - Surf Witchery b/w Wolf Luv CS [2012]

Since I saw these wolf luvvers the other night, I thought I should share their tape with you. As you can probably tell from the cover, this was released for the occasion of All Hallow's Eve. The title track is the tale of a witch who surfs in the moonlight, set to a mid-tempo hardcore beat sure to have you stomping across the room. On the other side is a instant-classic murder ballad about a wolf who solves the problem of unrequited love by killing all the friends of his beloved. On this release K!K incorporate black metal howls into hook-laden, lo-fi pop tunes so intuitively I'm still scratching my head in confusion. Throw this on when the moon gets full and see what happens.

Listen/download here. This tape is part of a Halloween Cassingle series, released in conjunction with southern Illinois bands Lumpy & the Dumpers and Trauma Harness. All good! Lumpy's tape features a cover of fellow Bellevillers Max Load, whom you might remember from a Killed By Death Compilation (#17?). Check them all out at Spotted Race.

Lumpy and the Dumpers - Demo [2012]

Continuing my series of "favorite tapes of 2012" posts, I present to you Lumpy & the Dumpers. Coming from the southwest corner of Illinois (in the vicinity of St. Louis), they exude all the boredom and disgust you'd expect to be felt in such a place. When they played in Champaign with Dirty Work last month, the singer (and a couple punks in the crowd) were flinging themselves around wearing nothing but diapers made of tissue paper. Needless to say the ensuing crowd action resulted in said diapers dissolving in to fine flakes of confetti.

Anyway, onto the tape itself: it consists of three zit-poppin' punk songs in a mid-tempo KBD style, so get ready to dance like an idiot with snot hanging out your nose. They're all jams but the standout to me is the first song, about getting addicted to huffing eel goo. Oh, the humanity! Do yourself a favor and get this tape for cheap, or on Lumpy's bandcamp for free

Lumpy & the Dumpers will be playing in Urbana on Feb 22 and Chicago on February 23. Both bills are pretty stacked, so come rock out and rub puke in yr eyes.

Contact Lumpy:
Lumpy and the Dumpers
21 W Garfield
Belleville, IL 62220
"Please send teeth, nails, slime, mulch, or rubber cement."