Rapeman - Inki's Butt Crack b/w Song Number One 7"

1. Inki's Butt Crack

2. Song Number One

Sub Pop Singles 1989

plus Live on WZRD 7/13/88

1. Intro

2. Radar Love Lizard

3. Superpussy

4. Trouser Minnow

5. Coition Ignition Mission

6. Up Beat

7. Outro

28 Minutes, 31MB 256K (single) and 128K (live set) MP3

What do you get when you cross Big Black with Scratch Acid? This. Anyone clicking this knows what they're getting into: Albini's antagonism, brittle guitars, angry bass and even the drums (with the dual snare attack) sound mean. I used to think that this record wasn't recorded well, but over time came to realize that the Rapeman material was in fact excellent recordings of instruments that are dialed in pretty weird. There's no bass to the bass (or I suppose I should say that the bass is all harsh upper-mids with David Wm Simms' trademark "strings slapping the fretboard" tone) The guitars have the presence knobs stuck at 30 and what is an otherwise scathing tone sounds perfect here. If Albini tried to play power chord rock, it would sound awful. The guitars tend to be sparse and annoying and violently stabbed into the music, with the bass and drums propelling everything forward. I listen to it now and think it sounds a bit hollow, but that's just because every other recording that's been thrown at me in the last decade has been brick walled. I threw the live on WZRD set on there for good measure. The recording is blown out and the levels go weird at times, but it's a good listen if for no reason other than to hear the in-between song banter, alternate lyrics and DJ's lack of charisma.

The Sub Pop Singles were limited runs released as part of a subscription. You didn't know what you'd get, but Sup Pop had great quality control back in the day. By the time I got wise, all of the "good" releases from that series (Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, etc.) had come and gone. As such, I picked this one up on Yahoo's auction site when they were trying to make a run at eBay's business model sometime in the mid-90s. Seeing as I paid less than $10 for this, I think it's safe to say that Yahoo never attracted many buyers.

DL

The Crownhate Ruin - Intermediate 7"

1. Better Still if they Don't Know

2. Every Minute's Sucker

Dischord/TC Ruin 1995

7:37, 14MB 256K MP3

A lot of the music from this period (and well.. pretty much any period) feeds off, borrows, steals and appropriates from its contemporaries. Hoover and Indian Summer were some of the first bands birthed from the hardcore scene that more or less got the 2nd (or 3rd, depending on how you want to look at it) wave "emo" ball rolling. I don't want to bore anyone with explanations of what emo was then as opposed to now (Andy Radin explained it years ago at fourfa.com) but long story short: before Dashboard Confessional (which itself is an amusingly out of date reference point) and the floppy haired Myspace bands (ditto) turned post-hardcore into pointless melodramatic histrionic hissy-fits, people bored with the then reigning hardcore template started experimenting with slowing down, adding dissonance, loud-soft dynamics and basically throwing some wrenches in the mix as far as playing with what was up until then primarily a by the seat of your pants, immediate music style. Plenty of bands had broken with the mold before all of that: The Minutemen upped punk/hardcore's musicality and even Black Flag slowed things down and got dissonant and introspective as time went on. DC had their own take on things with the famous "Revolution Summer" and post that, there was a lot of slowed down weirdness happening that made moshers scratch their heads. Some of it morphed into bland college rock and some, like Hoover, retained a bit of a sinister bite.

Anyhow, yeah. Back to Hoover. Seeing as I was raised in the midwest during the early 90's (ie, pre-internet) we were always last to catch wind of any musical trends. I went with some friends to see a local band and they ended up opening for Hoover. I wasn't sure what to think at the time. The energy was undeniable, but I couldn't really figure out what was supposed to be happening. The time signatures and tempos changed constantly and it wasn't something that my up until then Gorilla Biscuit saturated musical palate knew how to digest. I remembered being wowed and getting the record, but it took months for me to "get it". Once this wave of music started happening, you had everyone wearing sweaters, highwaters, clunky work shoes and gas station jackets.

Fast forward a year and Hoover splintered into Regulator Watts and The Crownhate Ruin. I personally Think Hoover was greater than the sum of its parts, but what always struck me was the fact that both of those bands sounded like Hoover, yet sounded nothing alike.

Fred Erskine is a big part of why I picked up the bass instead of guitar back in my formative years. The bass really carried Hoover and The Crownhate Ruin's music, and again, after a steady diet of hardcore and crossover, it was encouraging to see that the bass could play a more prominent role than just "lower guitar". I was lucky enough to see The Crownhate Ruin a couple of times. Once with Vin on drums and once with his replacement (if I remember correctly) who while a competent drummer really struggled to play his parts live. Vin is an was a beast on the drums and his absurdly quick rolls and cymbal grabs are pretty intense. Vin's previous band, 1.6 Band, is somewhat active again and they're definitely worth checking out.

Anyhow, for whatever reason all of The Crownhate Ruin's material was released at more or less the same time. They put out 3 7"s, a split with Karate and a sole LP: Until the Eagle Grins. Intermediate was recorded about halfway through the band's lifespan, but before their LP.

DL

Tune In Tokyo - Heat Resistant 7"

1. Names Are For Tombstones

2. Jericho Fever

3. Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck

4. Heaven's A Drag

Highwater Records, mid to late 90s

11:30, 21MB 256K MP3

I actually don't know much about this band. Apparently there are a couple of Tune In Tokyos out there, but this is the hardcore-ish one from Austin. I will say this; the layout is nothing special, but I dig the use of overlaying spot colors. I always appreciated it when sleeve designers would play off the medium's strength as opposed to trying to reproduce a blurry photograph or painting which would invariably end up looking washed out with weird coloration.

This 7" spits 4 songs of the Mike Kirsch (Torches to Rome, Navio Forge) school of rock at you in all their tinny glory. It's definitely a fun, energetic listen. Like most of the records that came out of this period, there's no bottom whatsoever to this record. I have no idea what these guys played through, but I can imagine them setting up Marshall JCM 800s and playing late 70's SGs through them (for the non-gear dorks out there: they'd have nice equipment that would otherwise sound awesome) but getting such a crappy recording done with a couple of duct-taped mics and a cassette 4-track. I swear that every band from this era did that. Granted, if you contrast that with the brick walled, pro-tooled within an inch of its life crap recording that most bands do now, I'll take the tinny. At least it's honest.

My favorite track was always Track 3. That's probably because they lifted "Love Will Tear Us Apart" note for note and sped it up.

DL

Rocket From the Crypt / Bloodthirsty Butchers - split 2x7"

Rocket From the Crypt

1. Cut It Loose

2. Living & Dying

3. Pressure's On

Bloodthirsty Butchers

1. Water

2. Alligator

3. Raven

Pusmort, 1994

18 Minutes, 32.8MB 256k MP3

Here's a record I lucked into years ago and haven't seen since. I can't even find them on eBay or Popsike to at least get an idea of its worth; not that I'd ever sell it. This is a gatefold, 2x7" split EP (each band gets a 7") between our heroes, RFTC and Japan's Bloodthirsty Butchers. I have no idea how many exist, but seeing as it's on Pushead's label, and how he didn't really think it was ever necessary to ever press any more than say... 300 of any given record, I'm sure there aren't many of these floating around. Am I gloating? Just a bit. I think I paid $13 for this many moons ago.

Of the 3 RFTC tracks, Pressure's On made another appearance on All Systems Go! Vol. 1. The other 2 songs are typically fun RFTC fare, well-done and all, but they definitely cherry-picked the best track for All Systems Go!

Truth be told, I never listened to the Bloodthirsty Butchers side that much. They play up tempo rock that compliments RFTC. Supposedly they're also still around. Japanese bands are nothing if not disciplined.

Seeing as it's years after the fact, I can safely come clean and say that I ripped off the image of the owl (granted, I altered it considerably) on the inside of this gatefold 7" for a design on one of my old band's shirts. We sold upwards of a dozen of them and I never paid Pushead a dime. I REGRET NOTHING.

DL

Rocket From the Crypt - I Flame You 7"

1. I Flame You

(B-side is the etching shown above)

Perfect Sound Records 1995

2:46, 5MB, 256k MP3

I am an unabashed John Reis/Speedo fanboy. I'll get that out of the way right now. If the man is in any way involved with a record, I will buy it. Nearly 20 years ago, I wore out a dubbed cassette of RFTC's Circa: Now! while delivering pizzas. I would pull up to houses and wait until the best parts of the songs would play through before exiting my car and dropping off the pies, such was the man's hold on me. I mean, look at this list: Rocket From the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Pitchfork, Sultans, Hot Snakes, Night Marchers, Back Off Cupids, Staccato Reeds... Okay, Staccato Reeds was pretty weak, but seriously? The dude's discography is a monster. His ruling to stinker ratio is off the scale, and half of his projects are seminal cornerstones in their respective genres.

I got to meet him once. The Get Up Kids recorded 4 Minute Mile in Chicago and stayed at my place while doing so. I got to hang out at CRC and accidentally drink all of Bob Weston's orange juice (sorry, Bob) and while I loved that band, I had no idea how huge they'd blow up after that. Fast forward a few months and The Get Up Kids were playing a sold out show with RFTC at the Metro. My fool ass had failed to get a ticket, and went to talk to the GUK crew at the merch table. While a menacing security guard looked on, I told them what happened and they said that they'd already filled all of their guest spots and that I was unfortunately out of luck. As soon as the security guard turned away, 2 of them stopped talking mid-sentence, yelled, "NOW", grabbed my shirt and forcibly pulled me over the merch table into the backstage area, told me to hurry back there and hide. T'was bad ass. I thanked them and wandered around backstage with a shit-eating-grin on my face, stoked that I was able to see the show. I ducked into one of the rooms and there was Speedo more or less holding court with other guys from the Get Up Kids telling him that he enjoyed their music and giving little pointers about being in a band. He offered me a beer, I took it, said hello and drank it all while my inner dialogue kept screaming, "HOLY SHIT" over and over. I was too terrified to speak because I probably would have come off as the starstruck dipshit kid that I was. Despite the fact that RFTC was touring on their weakest record, "RFTC" they tore ass later that night.

Anyhow, as for the record I posted, a shortage of material was never a problem for RFTC. Despite having more records than I could ever conceivably collect (not that I haven't tried) to this day, they still have a slew of songs that were never collected or re-released on any of their 3 collections. As far as I know, this was the only place to get this song.

I Flame You was a 1-sided, etched 7" that was a fan club release only. I walked into Reckless in Wicker Park (when they were still on North Ave), saw this on the wall and plunked down the $15 for it, which for a 7" was a lot of money for me.

Enjoy

DL

Generation of Vipers 12"

1. Ventricle

2. One Year too Early

3. The Way, The Truth and The Life

4. Side of

5. Tried & True

6. Voice of the Generation

Landmark Records 1997ish (1994)

24 minutes, 42MB, 256k MP3

When trying to figure out what to put up here, I'll do a quick search and make sure no one has already put forth the effort and beat me to it. I found another "Generation of Vipers" (who in all fairness have probably never heard of this one seeing as the AR outfit predates them by a decade and didn't do much) At first I was excited that I wouldn't have to spend an hour encoding and slicing this one up, but it wasn't meant to be. I pressed play on their myspace page and Neurisis downtuned sludge happened. Not awful by any means, but not what I was looking for.

Generation of Vipers is a band that has caused more arguments, made more friends and enemies and upset more people than any band of our time. It has done so because it is an utterly frank, no-holds barred dissection of America. In other words of you, your parents, your neighbors and your children.

Those are pretty heady words for a band that wasn't around more than a year and didn't play but a handful of shows in and around their hometown of Little Rock, AR. Like a lot of the bands that came out of AR in the early 90s (ie, Econochrist, Chino Horde, 12ft6, William Martyr 17, Benchmark, etc.) Generation of Vipers had riffs and personality to spare. Musically, they (and again, pretty much everyone from Little Rock) were pretty heavily influenced by Current and did the mid to up tempo hardcore with impassioned vocals with more of a meat (vegan of course; can't forget this was the PC-90's) and potatoes composition.

They were one of those "Should have, could have" bands that broke up before their time that all the Little Rock bands would talk up while on tour. A friend played me a battered cassette of these songs before the LP came out and "One Year Too Early" floored me.

Sadly, the drummer Chris was killed in a car accident. There's mention of him here, and File 13 records (then a mainstay of the Little Rock hardcore scene) did the "We've Lost Beauty" compilation LP in his honor.

Chris also played drums in William Martyr 17. Other members of Generation of Vipers played in bands such as Chino Horde and Thumbnail among others.

One thing that I'm realizing now that I'm going back and scrutinizing these records is that people did not know how to sequence DATs for shit. I can't imagine that many of these bands wanted between 4-7 seconds of dead space between songs. When DIY record labels started getting really prevelant in the late 80's/early 90's, digital was just starting to come into its own and the technology was not nearly as user intuitive as it is today. Digital's main advantage at that point was professed to be audio quality as opposed to ease of editing. Someone (like myself) being able to encode music and trim dead bits off of rendered waveforms was unheard of 15 years ago and so we had DAT tapes, which had digital audio with the ease of use of a cassette. CD-burners were large, expensive pieces of gear that only higher end studios had. CDRs were $5 each and every other one that you tried to burn would throw a glitch or an error. Most masters were sent in on DAT tapes, and they SUCKED. I could go into detail about how this is one of the factors that initially caused the whole return to analog, but long story short: not all DATs would play on all machines. There were also new formats coming down the pipe so quickly and for a while it was a free for all. (All of this was part of the initial impetus for Albini's Electrical Audio studios and his outspoken stance on analog.) Sometimes you'd record something on one machine, and it couldn't be played back on another. As you can guess, the difficulty also extends to sequencing the records. I definitely trimmed some dead air from this 12" and that My Lai 7". I also was able to get better levels, so this and all subsequent posts shouldn't sound all crappy and quiet.

Anyhow, aren't you glad that you just read all of that? Here's the music. I'll shut up now.

DL

Split Lip - Union Town (demo) 7"

01. Union town

3 minutes; 5.7MB

Anti-Matter Zine/Doghouse Records 1994

Living in the midwest, I was lucky enough to see Split Lip (usually on tour with Endpoint) numerous times before they went alt-country. Split Lip was one of the better hardcore bands kicking around during the time when hardcore bands sort of ground the youth crew template into the ground (the first time) and weren't really sure what to do without sounding stale. For every Split Lip, Quicksand, Hoover or really awesome, innovative bands that came out of this period, you unfortunately ended up with 10 more that were truly horrid. Split Lip started out promising, albiet a tad cookie-cutter and grew into something moodier, more brooding, and more "Americana" sounding as time went on.

I remember listening to this with a friend as soon as we got it. We dug it, but weren't exactly won over. The two of us had played For the Love of the Wounded incessantly, and this track was a lot more open and subdued. For a couple of kids weaned on a steady diet of Minor Threat, less aggressive wasn't necessarily a good thing. You probably know the story from there: once Fate's Got a Driver was released, Split Lip rechristened themselves Chamberlain and more or less acted like their earlier material never happened. This bummed me the fuck out since I thought those earlier records were brilliant. I understood what they were trying to do and while I loved Fate's Got a Driver, I got the split with Old Pike and it lost me. It took me years to appreciate it and the records that followed. To this day, Fate's Got a Driver is still my favorite record that they did.

Union Town ended up on Fate's for the most part unchanged. The vocals are definitely higher and delivered differently than happened on the album (and the subsequent re-recording/mixing of the album as Chamberlain) There are essentially 3 recorded versions of this song out there.

Seems that Split Lip/Chamberlain is back together in some form or another as of last year. If anyone hears some old asshole at a show in the back yelling For the Love of the Wounded songs, that's probably me.

DL

v/a - Happiness is Dry Pants 7"

v/a Happiness is Dry Pants 7"

01. Yo La Tengo - Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)

02. Big Black - Burning Indian Wife

03. Kilslug - Warlocks, Witches & Demons

04. Moving Targets - Squares & Circles

Chemical Imbalance, 1987

14 minutes, 26MB

This comp from 1987 came with issue #2 of Chemical Imbalance zine (which I sadly do not have). Besides having Kilslug, Moving Targets and Yo La Tengo doing a Fleetwood Mac cover, the highlight is the Big Black track which was recorded at the same time as the "Happy Otter" side of their Songs About Fucking LP. I ate up everything that that band did (my fanboydom including a snarky Steve Albini quote in my senior high picture page. Yeah, I fancied myself an antagonistic little fellow. Sad thing was that I even managed to misquote him.) Anyhow, the track ended up not being included on Songs About Fucking, but it's definitely worth a listen.

My version doesn't have a cover, but through the magic of Google I was able to find one (along with more details about this release) here

DL

My Lai - 03.16.68 7"

1. 03.16.68

2. Ruthless

3. 15 Minutes

4. Short Horn Champion

10 minutes, 18.45MB

Divot Records, 1998

My Lai was a Chicago outfit that kicked around for a few years in the late '90s. They were always fun live, and here's a 7" that I finally got sick of looking for an encoded version of online, so I just did it up myself.

As my mentioned in my previous post, the 90's were totally different than today. Underground "heavy" music hadn't blown up, so part of me wants to think that peoples' motives to create this sort of thing were a bit more pure than you'd find with a lot of the haircut bands that more or less took this sort of style and ran with it. My Lai certainly wasn't trendy; listening to them now they have something of a Enewetak or Unruh feel to them. They also happened to feature Brian Peterson on bass who booked many a show at the Fireside. In addition to this record, they also released an LP (Learn. Forget. Re-Learn) a different 7" (Pony Soldier) and appeared on a couple of comps who's names escape me at the moment.

Anyhow, this is more or less a test run. I gave the MP3s a quick listen and they seem to hold up. If anyone notices anything amiss on a technical level (ID tags, encoding, volume levels, etc.) amiss, please let me know.

Enjoy

DL