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"

Toothpaste - Oh Yeah Come On 7" [1987]

Toothpaste were an '80s Chicago band consisting of Naked Raygun/Silver Abuse/Wayouts folks who played ultra-simple, goofy, self-aware punk that makes me think of what Strike Under would have sounded like if they didn't take themselves seriously. According to the Chicago Punk Database, Toothpaste's first show was in 1981 at a "communist art gallery across Damen Avenue from the Busy Bee diner. Opening act was a performance artist who beat a dead rat with a coffee can." They only have two releases that I know of, and this is their later one, a 7" featuring the ever-so-catchy A-side "Oh Yeah Come On." The title is all of the lyrics, which makes it very easy for you to immediately yell along. Is this the so-called 'Chicago Sound?' I still don't know, but I dig this record a lot.

The B-side is the wierdo jam "Kids Do the Darndest Drugs," which is an apt-enough way of describing the song, really. Anyway if you're interested in the venerable heritage of Chicago punk (which you should be), grab this one for sure.

I'll be uploading their 1983 12" EP soon as well.

Oh yeah oh yeah come on

J.T. IV - Cosmic Lightning [197?-1980s]

Hit play and read:

The consummate loner punk J.T. IV [John Timmis IV] lived in and around the fringes of Chicago, and made some fantastically damaged glam-folk-punk tunes, first releasing the "Waiting for the CTA" 7" in 1980. It's a localized version of the Velvets song, sung over Blitzkrieg Bop chords. The song starts out pretty cheesy-sounding but devolves into a noisy mess foretelling the rest of this compilation of super-rare singles (with originals going for over $800). My favorite thing on here is the two-song folk lament suite "In the Can / Out of the Can," which communicates alienation and pathos as can only be done by a dude who's been institutionalized. On the rest of the songs there's all sorts of what Timmis called 'destructo rock,' an umbrella under which the MC5 and the Dead Boys would probably fit. All of this stuff languished in obscurity for the whole of Timmis's life (he died in 2002 in Nowhere, PA), but was released by Drag City in 2008. It's out of print now, but when it was available it came with a full-length DVD containing performances and home-movies (trailer below). More of his stuff remains unreleased and nearly impossible to find, but I hope it gets reissued like this album. If you can track that DVD down, let me know.

J.T. IV on Drag City

That's when I realize I'm starting to peak again