Due to popular request, here’s some more of the URINALS!
I first heard of the band as “proto-Hardcore”. That was long ago and it wasn’t until a british double-7″ bootleg containing all three URINALS 7″ came out, before I finally heard their music. Not one second was I disappointed, because URINALS may have been many things, but they were not “proto-Hardcore” only because “Ack Ack Ack Ack” had a staccato rhythm. In fact I wouldn’t even consider them “Garage” or any other label you would normally find stuck to their sound.
URINALS ARE sound! Plain simple: sound! The music, the rhythm, the structures, the tunes – it all blends in with the sound. Sometimes you’d hear about the “bad quality” of these recordings – how irgnorant is that? How limited are people who would speak so? Even if the first EP from 1978 would have been recorded live wth no overdubs etc. for financial reasons, it must have been clear by the third record, “Sex”, that this was the bands choice! Expecially the song “Sex”, my favourite URINALS track maybe, makes this obvious: The song writing would have seemingly required a “good recording” of this harmonic piece. There’s a certain hit potential in it and if they would have had recorded it properly and stretched it a little, it might have become a commercial success, who knows. But in the band’s 3rd of fourth year of existance, they chose to leave it like that. That, my friend, is what I call an artistic vision!
What makes the richness of this 7″ complete is the cover artwork and the whole materiality of it. As on the other two 7″s, “Sex” was obviously hand crafted a record; you’d find little pieces of a vinyl sticker or something on the otherwise blank a-side label. And the best: The flipside! I think, yet I might be wrong with this, they simply used the test tones you’d have to include on the 1/4 ” reel-to-reel mastertapes for calibration of sound when making it ready for cutting. They put these tones as an unnamed third track on the 7″, using the complete sound of the master! How great is that?! Making the very 7″ an entity, they used music, words, sound, texture – the whole materiality of it. Yet what comes out transcends its physical form when it reaches the subject playing it, listening to it.
Unfortunately, the said 3rd track has never been reissued and I think this is because it only works on the 7″, where you have it all together. But you know: Internet. Virtuality. Digitized dreams. Here you have them:
Sex.mp3
Go away Girl.mp3
B – Side.mp3
And now, and that’s an order – get the official URINALS Discography CD which has recently been reissued! You’ll also find a new URINALS CD there, which I never heard, and more like the follow-up band 100 FLOWERS and its great debut LP.
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Peter from KILLED BY DEATH RECORDS and I thought we’d do something special here. Since this is actually a split EP, why not make it a Split Post? While Peter got the HUVUDTVÄTT Side on his blog, I herewith offer the PICNIC BOYS side!
Like all Texas punk of the era, this is no letdown either. 
