Girls Against Boys "cruise yourself"

All the guys at the tattoo shop like listening to second tier grunge music.  I despised that stuff when it came out and therefore have no nostalgic connection to it.  As far as I'm concerned it all still sucks.  In 1994 at the peak of second tier grunge I was spending all my time with releases on Dischord records out of D.C. and Touch and Go records out of Chicago. My attotude was: fuck Seattle and all the vowel crooning douchery.  I couldn't understand  (and still don't ) how someone could prefer Bush over #girlsagainstboys .  GVB were darker, sexier and used two bass guitars.  McCloud's raspy drawl invites you in with "is everybody tucked in?" Then the band throbs for the better part of an hour.  The rhythmic delivery always gave me reason to think this band was the ego to their label mates The Jesus Lizard's id.  The friend who always got the girls while the other raved lunacy at the bar.  The two bands were really a big part of my listening habits back then and are great counterpoints.  So I've snuck this CD on at the tattoo shop thinking one of them would ask "who is this? I like it." Then I'd get to be a music snob in shining armor and turn the young 'uns on to some sweet mid '90s music that wasn't grunge shit.  Noone said a damn thing.  It really blows my mind.  If I wasn't so stubborn it might shake my confidence in my taste in music.  But I'm pretty stubborn.  You can lead a horse to water and all that.

W.A.S.P. "the last command"

When i began collecting music I was a desperate dude. On rare occasions I would accompany someone to a mall and have to be torn out of the record stores there.  Overwhelmed, I would examine every album i could touch.  Racks of mystical lps; each one a silent tome.  I couldn't even guess what most of them would sound like but I just wanted to hear them all.  In 1985 I was thirteen years old.  My money income came from a small allowance I had for doing chores at home ($5/week).  I would double that buy mowing our elderly neighbors lawn.  This would allow me to buy one cassette tape a week.  I would pedal my BMX bike a couple of miles to the Hills department store.  The only place I had reasonable access to that sold music (the Kmart in the other direction didn't have as big of a selection and frankly I just liked the smell of Hills better)  buying music at a retail store meant that my options were limited.  I'd comb the racks looking for some fantastical evil album cover. (I had started buying Iron Maiden cassettes this way)  I picked up this #wasp tape and the wicked looking guy with a scowl holding a vaguely militants flag looked really enticing so I flipped the tape over and read the song titles: "ballcrusher", "widowmaker" and "sex drive" sold me.  Bought the tape and an Icee slushie and pedaled home to listen to the new acquisition.   I loved Blackie Lawless's raspy vocals right from the get go.  It was a grittier, tougher sounding version of Motley Crue's "shout at the devil".  I tried convincing some of my burgeoning metal heads that it was a better release but no one else agreed.  It was my own little treasure that no one else wanted to share.  Years and years later when I guiltily bought this on cd in a used bin I popped it on expecting to be disappointed by nostalgia warped memory of the album.  I wasn't.   I remembered every lyric (it sometimes concerns me that these hedonistic poems remain in my subconscious but I have no recall of any of the Herman Hesse books I read in my early twenties)  it's a dumb fun album and u still sing it's praises.
Turns out Lawless has become some kind of evangical Christian or something. A road I cannot imagine.

Shudder To Think "pony express record"

A long time friend turned me on to #shuddertothink back in 1994 upon the release of this CD.  The album and band are growers not showers.  This is richly textured post-punk prog rock.  Mind bending time signatures and changes with obtuse and awesome lyrics sung in a falsetto vibrato. (Man I am on an adjective roll here). Upon first listen I wasn't sure what I was listening to but the song "x-french tee shirt" rides a single chord and is a catchy as hell intro point.  I listened to the song over and over again eventually spreading out into the rest of the disc.  Now 22 years after it's release it's still a favorite of mine.  My buddy and I caught the band on their tour for the album, they played at the showplace theatre.  We were psyched!  They took the stage and I remember them kicking ass.  During a break between songs the singer/guitarist Craig singled out my friend and I remarking about how if we changed places the show would be different.  It was arty and unsettling to me.  I was a very self-conscious 22 year old and it kind of freaked me out.  I slowly melted back into the crowd to avoid further interaction.  Now as a 44 year old grizzled music fan I am so embarassed and regretful of not embracing that night and the performance-as-art experience.  The band was on their creative peak at that time and would break up after releasing a rather shocking follow up album.  It seems so funny to me now after going to hundreds of shows and performing in dozens that this interaction would have messed with me so much.  It could have been such a cool thing had I embraced it.  It's rare now that live music really entrances me the way it used to, there are still shows I've attended recently that whisk me away into the experience but they seem rarer and rarer. 
The other thing I've noticed about this record is that Rush fans love it. The inverse isn't necessarily true though.  Take that how you like.

Doris Duke "I'm a loser"

I've stated in these writings many times that I love sad and melancholic music. Slow core, sad indie, doom metal, depressive black metal,country, goth, etc. Soul music might be the most consistent genre I find comfort in.  The self depreciating lyrics of loss set to funky drums and remarkable bass players always strikes a chord with me.  I found this #dorisduke cd by reading a soul music blog.  The review struck me but really the album title had sold me sight unseen.  If I had seen this disc on a rack randomly it would have come home with me.  Doris duke veers into screaming jay hawkins-esque melodrama which is cool by me.  Songs about drinking after being jilted set to some tasty bass playing.  I spent many Sunday mornings drinking coffee and playing this loudly in my apartment on the lower west side of Buffalo.  I had gone through a divorce and this album was my solitary gospel.  Most of my friends and co-workers weren't really into this type of stuff, and really it's not the kind of cd you play around other people.  But it suited me. Living alone in a large empty apartment with this music bouncing off the under-furnished floors, walls and tall ceilings.  Songs like "I don't care anymore", "divorce decree" and "ghost of myself" accentuated the open empty spaces of those rooms.  It was a great location and soundtrack for a head bobbing pity party.  Re listening to this this morning I get to watch my 1-year old shake his little butt and smile and sway to the grooves in my cluttered and warm family home.  It's a great contrast and I get to focus on the musicality of the cd instead of the grim narratives.  Giving the cd a second life, much like my own second life.  It's a good morning.  The little guy just stumbled past me trailing the vapor of a dirty diaper and I'm thankful to be here to change it.

Palomar Sky Survey "the nightlife"

This cd is really hard to write about but seems weird to avoid it.  It's existence is rife with personal stories and experiences. #palomarskysurvey was an indie rock band I played in from 1998-2002ish.  We released a 7", were featured on a comp cd and released this full length.  I spent a lot of time with those girls in the rehearsal room, in the tour van, in the recording studio, at amy's place diner and sloppily drunk at the mohawk place.  Relistening to this cd for the first time in years triggers so many memories it's overwhelming.  I'm also surprised at how those memories are almost entirely positive.  Usually with these endeavours there is all kinds of negative stories and experiences.  I really don't remember too many bad times (maybe because those bad times were usually triggered by me being drunk and therefore have limited recall).  We were pretty singular in purpose, writing sappy sad pop songs in a smarmy arty indie rock way.  We really liked what we were doing.  Some of these songs have aged well to me but really I can't listen to anything on here objectively.  I often wonder what it sounds like to someone removed from it.  One of my favorite people in the world recorded this for us.  I brought it up to him recently at a hockey game. I told him I had revisited the disc and he remarked that he remembers it being cool though admittingly he couldn't really remember it.  It's novel to me that this disc was at the center of my universe at one point. It was my crowning achievement.   Now it's in a mental "where are they now?" bin.  There was a while after we broke up where I was embarassed of my vocals on the album.  They're pretty bad and I'm not sure even now why the girls encouraged me then.  Listening to them now I'm not embarassed.  It's a time capsule of my state of mind at the time: mopey and faux poetic (though cringe worthy in their off-key mimic of vocalists I wished I was).  I'm not ready to play this stuff for my kids.  I know they won't like it and that'll sting.  Man though... those were salad days.

Cepheide "respire"

I've been having a hard time falling asleep lately.  This political climate has me all wound up in knots. I am dog tired but when I lay down my mind races with apocalyptic fear.  To distract myself I listen to music wearing headphones and wait for slumber to wrestle me down.   Lately my lullaby has been atmospheric black metal.  It's one of those lifelong anomalies.  I always fall asleep to blistering music.  Many of my past roommates have laughed at my choices of bedtime playlists.  The steady fast chugging of death metal riffs have always been a favorite of mine, the blurry rhythms relax me.  Familiar '80s hardcore does by he trick too.  If I'm anxious when I lay down the familiarity of that stuff will knock me out. Lately the stuff to do the trick is atmospheric black metal.  I suspect I find this grim brand of psychedelic music a fitting end times lullaby due to it's wall of droning staccato guitars and buried howls as soundtrack to my inner turmoil. Angst made darkly sonic.  This #cepheide album "respire" fits that bill to a tee.  Long passages of churning guitars broken up by half time drums and atonal howls buried in the mix that sound like a lost soul struggling to break into our Astral plane. The stuff is epic. I drift along the long songs eventually listening in a half awake dream state and when I realise that experience is happening I half try to sustain it, to keep the trance going.  Eventually I lose the battle and pass into unconciousness.  At some point later in the night I partially rouse to rip the headphones off my head and return to the needed slumber.  Thankful for the reprieve this french duo have afforded my senses.

Dead Kennedys "frankenchrist"

It's been hard for me to want to do much of anything after this election.  I'm ashamed of my country. I am fearful for my children and their future.  I wish I was just waxing poetic about political dogmas, but I am genuinely afraid of our future. I never really thought much about socio-politics until I heard the #deadkennedys .  Jello's paranoid lyrics struck a chord in my brain. After discovering them I scoured record stores for their releases and quickly obtained their discography.  This album "frankenchrist" was always my favorite.  They slowed the music a bit allowing it to contribute to moods more and the lyrical webs made are acute and insightful.  If you've ever listened to this album and spent time with it I find it very hard to believe you vote any direction away from liberal.
I've listened to this this morning and it reads like a current event even though this record was released in 1985. It's Orwellian view of our government and society is as poignant and resonating even more now than in the Reagan era it was recorded in.  It's kind of terrifying in it's accuracy.  Songs like "stars and stripes of corruption", "this could be anywhere" and "soup is good food" all rattle my cage still.  If you weren't filled with enough anxiety over our future and our government's intentions than give this disc a spin.  It'll really put an edge on that despair.

Mesarthim "pillars"

I have sleep apnea.  I have it pretty severely so I wear a cpap mask when I sleep. My kids call it my Darth Vader mask.  One thing this mask allows is for me to scuba under heavy covers and create like a sensory depravation cocoon. I get the utter blackness and warmth without feeling like I'm suffocating.  It had been a couple sleepless nights with the 4 year old in our bed so last night I layer down by 8:30 pm to catch up on sleep  though exhausted I still needed to unwind so in my blackened haven I listened to this cd on headphones. #mesarthim play sci-fi themed atmospheric black metal. Which amounts to well produced and played black metal with bloopy-bleepy keyboards instead of orchestra string section keyboards.  I love the stuff. I started really visualizing out of body space stuff, it was trippy and novel so I entertained it. I let the music work my head and lied there with eyes open in pitch black.  It was one of those experiences I am always skeptical of but love the romantic artistic nature of its recounts.  I have experienced similar effects (drug induced) but never so quickly or thoroughly.  I suspect the sleep depravation had something to do with it.  I am anxious to listen to this again in a similar setting to see if it was a hallucinatory perfect storm or if this album really is that trippy.  I've enjoyed this record as background music to drawing, I have even played it (to favorable reviews) at the tattoo shop. It's set to top my year end list of it keeps having these seeming profound effects on me. Cool.

Circle Jerks "wild in the streets"

Alot of times you hear about kids in fringe subcultures complain about being victims. They will lament how they were ostracized and bullied.  That was not my punk rock skateboarding crew of friends. We welcomed being  shunned, actually worked hard at it.  We were at times bullies ourselves. We never backed down and often antoginized our rival peers.  There was an evening where we we up to our usual crap: skateboarding and drinking Yukon Jack and chasing it with awful lime juice from a bulbous plastic green lime. The apartment I was crashing at was around the corner from a pizzeria in the suburban town we lived.  That night we noticed that the pizzeria was filled to the gills with local high school football jerseys and pom poms. We came to realize it was some sort of jock homecoming event or whatever.  Naturally we taunted the patrons through the giant plate windows. The taunts escalated to threats on both sides.  After a huddle a bunch of the jocks filed outside towards our motley crew. Shouts of "muffinhead!" (A slur the athletes used to describe our home made haircuts) led to shoves and then to fists being thrown.  It was a short riotous melee because as soon as it started pizzeria staff began shouting about the police being called, since the police station was three doors from our current location we knew enough to scatter.  Before we did though I remember seeing one of my buddies holding a BMX bicycle above his head and crash it down on a group of football players.  We were all stunned for a moment, it was like a surreal event from a movie.  Someone yelled "cops!" and we scattered.  As we ran and skated in a burst of directions I distinctly remember hearing a couple of my friends gleefully singing the chorus "wild in the streets! Running! Running!" from the title track of this #circlejerks album.

Ludichrist "immaculate deception"

Every collector has some holy grails they persue.  Albums from their youth that have some emotional connection to their musical biography.  These elusive grails are usually out of print which is how they end up being rare and special.  I discovered #ludichrist on a combat records sampler cassette in 1986 and went out straight away and bought their debut on cassette.  It's thrashy tounge-in-cheek crossover hardcore with songs like "most people are dicks" and "green eggs and ham".  It was the summer I took up skateboarding and I loved the humor in an otherwise pretty grim fear-the-apocolypse of the cold war genre.
Years passed and I had lost the tape and forgotten about the release until I had a nostalgic collecting phase of thrash metal and crossover in my early thirties.  I checked online shops like Amazon and ebay and the CD was out of print and going for between $50-$100.  I really have a hard time paying that much for a release, in fact I never have so I resigned it to the "maybe I'll find it" mental database.  More years passed and I was discussing the album with another old guy at a tattoo shop I used to work at.  We listened to a streaming version of it and I enjoyed remembering lyrics and songs and then double checked to see if it had been re-released or something.  Nope.  Then, on one of my weekly combs through used cd bins I flipped through an "L" section and there in all its jewel cased glory was this disc!  My eyes darted to the price sticker...$1.99!?! Seriously?!? I bounded to the counter to pay for it before some employee realised their mistake and tried to re price the cd.  I gingerly placed the prize in my backpack and walked out to my motorcycle.  I drove directly back to my apartment ignoring my ritualistic lunch (at which I would pour over my purchases of the day reading cd booklets and stuffing my face with Indian food)  I listened to the album twice and placed it in its appropriate alphabetical spot on my shelf.  Every time my eye catches the spine of this disc I feel warm and fuzzy with conquest. It still goes for over $50 on amazon.

Dinosaur Jr. "Whatever's cool with me"

The only record store in the small college town I lived in in 1991 was at the small mall at the center of town.  While it didn't carry any of the stuff I was reading about in my mail order fanzines they did occasionally stock the music I saw on MTV's 120 minutes (which was loaned to me on vhs by one of the other art major students and my community college)  I was at the mall store with a cashed dishwasher check burning a hole in my pocket.  This ep was affordable and the band #dinosaurjr resonated favorably with me.  At the time CDs were rare treats and I completely devoured anything I bought.  J Mascis's slacker drawl and loud guitar were welcome and I really liked this disc, it led me to buy their earlier work and as usual my entry point to the catalog remains my favorite.  One thing about me is that I very rarely like guitar solos. It's not that I don't appreciate guitar heroics, I just prefer them in the context of the song not as a "look at me" flashpoint tacked on to the composition. But the solo/outro on the live version of "thumb" on this release has me holding my imaginary lighter aloft.  The lack of a rhythm guitar allows the rhythm section to shine during the solo.  The bass growls and is tasteful and locks step with the awesome live drums.  The solo isn't just a blistering scale, it's a soulful excursion into counter harmonies. It actually feels narrative.  Something guitar lovers have tried explaining to me (especially jam band fans) is that you have to let the guitar be narrative, that never really happens for me during solos. Except on this track.  I used to put songs from this cd on mix tapes and it's occurring to me now that I don't think I ever put this song on one.  That's weird to me now.

The Jesus and Mary Chain "darklands"

There was a punk/goth girl in my high school that terrified and bewitched me.  It was the '80s and the punk rock look hadn't yet been co-opted by mall stores, in fact the only punk rockers in mainstream culture tended to be cartoonish street villains in action movies.  I was still very much a pop culture victim and it made her exotically gorgeous and dangerous.  I think I may have spoken a handful of words to her (she was a grade above and unequivocally out of my league).  She wore a #thejesusandmarychain shirt and I was intrigued by the name though it was years later in college when I first remember actually hearing the band.  I remember when I first heard them I thought they were wimpy in a Smiths way and I disregarded them.  I chalked it up to "it must be a hot punk rock girl thing", something I was not equipped to appreciate.  Years later, years after the whole shoegaze explosion they helped parent, I rediscovered the band. I heard a song at a local dive bar called The Pink Flamingo. It hit me harder than the cheap Canadian beer. I went to the local specialty record store Home Of The Hits soon after and combed their used cd bin for one of the band's discs. I remembered this album cover from that punk girl's shirt and bought it.  Upon revisiting I was surprised how loud the band actually were, not in a heavy metal bombast way but in a distorted speaker sheer volume way.  I quickly fell in love with their discography of blurry, distorted songs with sensual monotonous vocals.  Years later, way after the in tial fact, I fell in love with the shoegaze genre they helped spawn. But that's stories for other discs.