It's Time to Tie Your Loose Ends Up (Tie 'Em Up!) -- More Errata!

As I start work on something far more informative and useful, some updates are happening around this blog. I've updated the sourcing for entries on the right side of the page through the most recent post prior to this one (this one will be added shortly!). I'll be updating the "CDs Visible in the Banner" over on the right as well, now that I have a more focused and higher resolution image in place--even if that means they may indeed be easier to read now anyway.

While I am doing this, this post also serves to advance my immediate cause of referencing Tommy Stinson's short-lived post-Replacements project, Bash & Pop, whose album (not first, not second--just album) I picked up yesterday as I thought, "Why do I know this name, 'Bash & Pop'?" and was luckily able to look them up quickly and then bump the heel of my palm against my forehead. I don't know them well enough yet to write much at all, though I was tempted to write a "Post 'Mats" article, as I have a fondness for (and a much greater familiarity with) the works of Paul Westerberg. But I'm going to keep myself restrained regarding my "immediate impressions" sensibilities for a non-exceptional instance.

What I will mention, however, is the next stack of items added to my queue at the moment, just as a starting off point for anyone who happens by and wants to give some, any, or all a thumbs up. As with the last time I did this, here's an image of those releases:

Agoraphobic Nosebleed/Converge - The Poached Diaries

Alien - The Pleasure of Leisure

Baroness - Yellow & Green

Bash & Pop - Friday Night Is Killing Me

Blindside - A Thought Crushed My Mind

Botch - An Anthology of Dead Ends

Boysetsfire - Live for Today

Bronski Beat - Truthdare or Doubledare

Burning Airlines - Identikit

Burning Airlines - Mission: Control

The Byrds - The Preflyte Session

Cabaret Voltaire - Mix Up

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Tender Prey

Clinic - Walking With Thee

The Cult - Sonic Temple

An Emotional Fish - Junk Puppets

Brian Eno - Discreet Music

Bob Geldof - How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell Well

GoGoGo Airheart - GoGoGo Airheart

Harvey Milk - Special Wishes

Hot Cross - Cryonics

Jaguar Love - Jaguar Love EP

Jayhawks - Music from the North Country [Anthology]

Katatonia - The Great Cold Distance

Kno - Death Is Silent

Lit - Atomic

Mercury Rev - All Is Dream

Takako Minekawa - Roomic Cube

Mission of Burma - Unsound

Rabies Caste - Let the Soul Out and Cut the Vein

Radiohead - Amnesiac [Deluxe]

Radiohead - Kid A [Deluxe]

Radiohead - OK Computer [Deluxe]

Royal City - Little Heart's Ease

Ruhaeda - Ruhaeda

The Ruts - Something I Said - The Best of the Ruts

Slint - Spiderland

Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot [Deluxe]

Chris Spedding - Enemy Within

Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary

Supersuckers - Devil's Food

Tangerine Dream - Green Desert

Television - Adventure

Tones on Tail - Everything!

Torcher - Your Word Against Fire

Tom Waits - Blood Money

X-Dream - Radio

 

Do You Remember What the Music Meant to You? To Me? -- Pretty Girls Make Graves

Only once in a great while do I get in on the ground floor of an act. It's rare, because I wander in too many directions at once to focus long enough to expand completely on any direction. A new band in a genre, or from a label is a rarity for me, because I'm too stuck on each band or artist I start myself on. The exceptions generally come from two places: opening acts at live shows (I can happily note that I knew OK Go before their famous treadmill dance video, before they were even signed, for that matter) or when a band breaks up and I catch wind of what this or that member happens to be doing. There was no moment better for this than the early 2000's as I was leaving high school. My two new favourite bands, At the Drive-In and The Murder City Devils both broke up, and I was too much a neophyte to music in general to yet be overwhelmed, so when I heard about side projects, it actually connected and stuck. While At the Drive-In turned into The Mars Volta and Sparta, The Murder City Devils seemed to generally dissipate quite completely. Briefly, vocalist Spencer Moody, drummer Coady Willis, and guitarist Nate Manny formed a band named Dead Low Tide, releasing an EP, seeming pretty quiet and then breaking up, only then putting out their self-titled full-length.

A little more on the side, MCD bassist Derek Fudesco had reunited with Andrea Zollo (who you may remember did backing vocals for the Devils once or twice) to form Pretty Girls Make Graves, named for the Smiths song (in turned name for a Kerouac quote). Like Dead Low Tide--and thus mirroring the At the Drive-In descendants movements, EPs first--Pretty Girls released a self-titled EP of four songs in 2001. Following shortly thereafter was the debut full-length, Good Health, on April 9th, 2002. Apparently major indie label Matador took over the album's distribution sometime (from original label Lookout! Records) and dropped the EP on it, which is news to me and means my failure to ever collect the original EP in physical form might be rectified more simply.

This is where I really come into the story, which is silly considering this is my story (in a sense), but nevermind that. Once again, eMusic played a big role in this--Lookout! was one of the labels working with eMusic at the time (at one point I suggested the place to label Kranky, but they told me, in some of the nicest e-mails I ever got, that it simply wasn't financially viable, which made me want to buy more of their releases) and so I downloaded my legal copy of Good Health with a shrug one day in college and listened to it. Then immediately listened to it again. I was kind of in awe: normally I'm not one for immediate impressions (indeed, anyone who reads many entries will know this, and my recall that at the time I made brief mention of this album). At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul, though I came to it during what I'm told was a glut of Swedish-styled melodic death metal, was another that I listened to again immediately as its hooks went in without hesitation.

It's in the Past...And Now, We Toast -- At the Drive-In

While I can't say that mixed emotions, hormones, and a bit of over-thinking weren't at the root of the final outburst, there was only one band's end that brought me to tears. Yeah, it was high school. Yeah, it was one of the rougher years of high school (though my years in it were not all that bad, to be honest). Still, I never saw them live, and I likely never will, unless their reunion turns into something more than a handful of festival shows. I've known other fans without having to seek them out, converted various friends, and even know someone from their hometown--with all of this, no one has ever (if I recall correctly, at least) recognized my (rather minimalist, to be fair) shirt advertising them. That's not an exclusive claim, of course, but for a band that got this big--even if it was a flash when they were big--it's a bit surprising all the same.

They basically had one, one-and-a-half big hits that went around the country and the world openly. They were both off the same album, and it came out twelve years ago. The band has faded to a footnote (similar to how The Skids--see poll on the right, if you haven't--are mentioned, despite the impression I've gotten that they were well-thought of during their existence) in many ways, to the acts that followed in their wake from the splintered elements they left behind them. It's weird, really, as they feel more lost and faded than a lot of the much older (and also defunct) bands I listen to. Not in the sense of ingenuity, so much as the feeling that their impact on the public conscious, even the "indie" one, was minor, and more of a name than an associated music.

Doubtless, at least a few people who know me could guess exactly who I am talking about right now. It's possible, too, that some people will guess with some semblance of dread, though I don't think one ought to. Still, tastes are tastes, and there's no accounting for them, etc., but I ask--as always--that you approach this music, new, loved, old, hated, with an open mind and listen to it to hear what there might be in it to love for those of us who do, if you don't know already.

Here's that seemingly unrecognized shirt:

I've Got a Preacher's Mouth and Rock 'n' Roll Heart -- Okay, Mostly Rock and Roll, If We're Honest: The Murder City Devils

The principle purpose--so far as I can guess--of compilations and split releases is often lost on me. I avoid compilations as a general rule, as I find them difficult to follow, or so unrepresentative that they might lose me on an interesting artist by sampling too little and too wrong a part of their entire repertoire. Most splits, at least those I know of are singles with a song per band, one on each side of a 45 7" record. Sometimes, too, they are gimmicky ideas or peculiar thoughts, which are most interesting with bands already familiar to listeners. Mudhoney and Sonic Youth each played the other band's song on the "Touch Me, I'm Sick/Halloween" split. Braid covered the Naked Eyes' hit version of the Bacharach/David song "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" and Burning Airlines backed it with Echo & the Bunnymen's "Back of Love," so there was even disparity in use of existing songs as hooks. At the Drive-In did one in-character track and one peculiar pseudo-dub track, which fits their experience and tastes but not the band in general, when they did a split with Sunshine--so on and so forth.

So, I often excise the side by the band I'm already interested and let the other pass, in the interest of not writing them off over a weird experimental track. It's not always the case, as I'll go with it given the entire split for some reason, via legitimate MP3 or CD release (as I did when acquiring the Burning Airlines/Braid split). Once upon a time, I ended up with the MP3s for the split that leads me to today's entry:

That is the ultra-limited blue issue, though the less limited gold pressing out there. Interestingly, it violates the same "rules" I approach most splits with: they are both remixes by The Latch Brothers. At the Drive-In I knew and loved, which was the reason for snagging the tracks in the first place. Each is represented on the clear sleeve packaging: At the Drive-In's Vaya EP had that angled boombox on an orange field for its cover, and the skull and crossbones image was the Murder City Devils' emblem for a time. The Latch Brothers remixed ATDI's "Rascuache" (from Vaya, the apex of the band, for me), and MCD's "Press Gang." That track comes from the Murder City Devils' third long-player, In Name and Blood, and it's a doozy, even when tweaked by outsiders.