Spike Jonze's «Where the wild Things are». I love it.
Reading:
«Am Tisch. Die kulinarische Bohème oder die Entdeckung der Lebenslust.» ("At the table. The culinary bohème or the discovery of the lust of life"") by Susanne Kippenberger. In short biographical essays, Kippenberger portrays chefs and savourers alike, writing a witty piece of the cultural history of food and eating and the enjoying of it. A very dumb and equally popular quote implies that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture": Kippenbergers "Am Tisch" can be read as one formidable mockery of that phrase.
As promised. here’s the repost from August 12 2006. Songs freshly ripped. What a great, great, great albeit short, short, short record! I bet KPeterD (KPD) says he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t have it. Love, peace and debauchery.
Top-notch punkrock from SF, this is the bands 2nd 7″ (the first one, “In Vagueness deal” is nice, but not too spectacular apart from the picture sleeve). BREAKOUT’s final output was a monstrous 12″EP called “No more” which has received much acclaim lately and rightly so!
This 7″ I think is the perfect link between the two mentioned – it really sits in the middle of them musically, which doesn’t make it average. This is the correct proof for music not being math, by the way.
Here’s the complete scorcher for you!
After I had posted the BREAKOUTS 12″, I asked myself what could come next without lowering the quality level. I kept searching my records and tapes, started ripping some tapes (Jerry’s Kids live and the occassional Heavy Metal demos) when all of a sudden I had a flashback. I remembered the old local record store I mentioned before. It was a small one room store. Everything in the inside was painted black: The walls, the hand made crude shelves, the ceiling, the floor, the seats and the black shades in the store window that kept the light out. The small office room, two steps down, on the other hand was painted all green. It made you sick when you walked in or out, it was just too much. The first time I had visited the store was in 1980. I remember the first DEAD KENNEDYS record on display, as well as the first IRON MAIDEN, AC/DC and other stuff, mainly Punk though. It was magic, especially when you were 12 years old. There seemed to be soooo many records to check out making you feel even smaller. What followed were years and years of visiting the store and another great one just around the corner (that one had a lot of bootlegs for sale from ca. 1982 on). I’d say there wasn’t one week without spending hours in the store, talking to the crazy owner and his employee, making friends with Metalheads and some Punks from Switzerland and nearby Austria.
In 1984, I opened the door and there was an incredible clean and razor sharp record playing on the main speakers. These speakers were hand made and I swear I never heard such a great clean and forceful sound ever again. The record the owner had put on had just come in with the big box of imports he received every thursday or friday and as I said, the sound was amazing. It was YYY’s 12″ – to me epitomizing to this very day the Hardcore genre like few others. There’s no Punk left in the sound and it does not lean towards Metal the tiniest bit. The band had one of the tightest rhythm sections in Hardcore. The bassist and the drummer are so incredibly great on this record that I sometimes wish I had their separated lines only, just like in the marvelous “Sold out” dub mix on the first GANG GREEN 7″. I swear I could listen to these two guys alone forever. Not that the singer and the guitarist shouldn’t be on the EP – it would just be fantastic if for a change I could focus on the rhythm section alone. This EP is perfect (even better than the BREAKOUTS’s 12er, to be honest). The production, the songs, the musicians, the cover art and the lyrics. Blimey you can’t beat YYY can you.
This EP had been reissued (that’s the red & black cover you see pictured) in 1989 and spiced up with some remixed demo tracks and such. These extra are great and if it was the only thing YYY had ever released, you could hardly imagine the band could have gotten better after them. When you hold them against the EP tracks though, they’re just very good. The label, Fringe, btw is the same that later released Metal records mainly, like SLAUGHTER and SACRIFICE.
Here’s the band’s official myspace site. And here’s a video I just found on Youporn. Damn, these guys really look like I had imagined them to look like in the past 24 years. Wonderful. I love the internet!
As you can read on the myspace site, YYY are preparing an offical anthology CD – let’s hope it will be released soon.
Why this has never been re-released, I don’t know. One of the best Hardcore Punk records ever released. Period. Find the BREAKOUTS first 7″ here and the 2nd 7″ here. Ripped with love. Forget all the other shit ass quality rips on crap blogs all over. Enjoy fuckers.
Seriously, for a minute: Am I that hip?! I just started watching Iron Man and before the first half hour of the movie was over, it had me get excited about AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and SUICIDAL TENDENCIES’ “Institutionalized” in the soundtrack. It feels kinda weird to be so much up to date. I mean, sure – AC/DC’s BIB album is one of the gold standards in rock, selling trillions and SUICIDAL TENDENCIES’ first amazing LP ain’t that much underground either. But the combination of the two, within minutes, in a blockbuster? What the fuck?!
Will bands like EFFIGIES (one of the best band names ever, btw) ever become integral part of the pop business? I highly doubt so. Acid dripping cynicism, evil and uncomfortable, combined with tight musicanship and a slick production. You may say “Security” is boring and damn right you are. I bet this is what it’s supposed to be – boring and annoying. This 7″ has it all: Excitement, power, cynicism, boredom, annoyance and a song about an airplane crash. Ever since SAXON’s “The Eagle has landed”, I think songs about plane crashes are the best. And records with airplane crash covers are even better. And those with song lyrics printed on the labels and with a concept all over the whole thing. Enjoy!
Finally a RAVEN post, you may say. Being one of the flagships of the first wave of the NWOBHM, UK’s RAVEN had started out as early as in 1974 already and developped a style that would lay down the first stepping stones for what a few years later morphed into Speed Metal (the lads called it Athletic Rock, haha). It’s not so much the speed of the drumming but rather the hectic singing and the wild guitar work. There’s really a whole lot going on in the background, if you follow the guitars. Quite a novelty for a 1980 Metal band! “Don’t need your Money” is the sing along track on the band’s first vinyl output, but “Wiped Out” is the hit. What a song!
RAVEN were a bit too hectic for me in the old days, I must admit. I bought all their records until “All for one” but rarely ever played them and in the end, I sold them along with most of my Metal records in the mid 80s. So when I saw this on Ebay last week, it seemed like a good chance to pick it up again. The description said something like “as new” and I could personally pick up all the records I won from the same guy. Silly me. Instead of taking a close look on what I bought, I had a little chit-chat with the guy who turned out to be a late-comer (I had expected him to be older & wiser & stronger). The first attempt of getting the records had miserably failed: I rode through heavy rain on the bike, when after 20 miles I ran out of motor oil. I had to leave the bike in some weird dump and jump on the train to get me back home. So I tried again the day after. It was a nice but long and cold ride until I was finally home with the records. It almost felt like 25 years ago, when I would ride through ice storms on my mom’s moped to the local record store, which was about a hour away. It never stopped me, however hard the rain was pouring down. One time, my finger tips froze so badly, I had to go to the emergency cause me fingers had turned blue by the time I had come home. If memory serves, it was the day VENOM’s “Die hard” 7″ was released. My mom had to put it on the turntable for me (okay, that’s a lie, but it sounds really good).
Back home I took a superficial look at the batch I won Ebay and enthusiastically left positive feedback. I was home safe, opened a good bottle of french wine and felt cosy and totally regressive, so why not just give the guy some good score for bringing me so much pleasure. What kind of a fool am I, really. You can imagine how pissed off I was when I played this RAVEN single and realized it was totally beat up. And the next surprise was: The guy sold me the bootleg of the AVATAR 7″ I had been re-hunting so long. Total bummer!
So here we go with RAVEN and a fine example of how dumb Metal really makes you. It’s a great record, but I somehow can’t enjoy it as much as I wish. Boring sissy story, I know. But to say it with Ian MacKaye: “And what the fuck have you done?!”
Thanks for the donations. Full service for another year guaranteed!
Germany’s BETON COMBO released one LP, a 12″ and this monster of a 7″. I must admit that the LP means everything to me a Punk LP could possible mean to anyone, with all its Indian Hardcore Punk-charme, so totally focussed on that Berlin of the 80s feeling that historians will write masses of books about in years to come.
This one sounds different. Much more on the brutal side of Hardcore Punk, not unlike Sweden’s UNTER DEN LINDEN, if you ask me, but even better, crunchier, meaner. The incredible “High on War” and “Zubrowka” hit like a steam hammer and “Hohle Schweine” (“Stupid Pigs”), although slower, is so incredibly aggressive and mean with the nasty german lyrics and the singer’s trademark cynical “ha-ha” – laughter. This is one of my favourite singers ever, this guy just has it (Hunter S. Thompson called it Gonzo, when it came in literary form). What makes this totally surreal is that although it’s german, I can only understand a few words and the rest is totally vague, could be any language or none at all. Wonderful! And have you heard the guitar lead at the end of the song? Can this be true? 1983, guys, 1983! Bloody hell, when making this post ready, I could hardly edit the rips cause I had to play the tracks over and over again. What a monster of a record!
A friend of mine saw BETON COMBO play live around the time this EP was released. He said the gigs were battles against the audience rather than concerts, so “high on war” everybody was. Sure can imagine that!
I guess there’s a BETON COMBO discography CD around somewhere. Buy it (or find yourself the original vinyls. Well, honestly, when I look at the beautiful foldout cover of this, I say fuck the CD, save some greens and buy yourself the original, shouldn’t be toooooooo expensive). German Hardcore Punk going transcendetal again, with a distinctive phenomenological turn!
What better way of saying thank you for the donations could there be, than posting another fine product of the mighty NWOBHM?
Merseyside’s DAMASCUS one and only release (apart from a hard to find demo tape – please get in touch, if you happen to have a good sounding copy of it!) was this extremely scarce 12″, released in 1984 in two pressings of 500 each (depicted is the 2nd press. I’ve never seen a first press copy. If you have one, you must give it to me!). The great scarcity of the EP and the short time existence of DAMASCUS made them one of the NWOBHM’s best kept secrets. And definitely not a cult band (how I hate that term, btw). Isn’t the cover of this alone worth a trillion?
Whenever I play these four track monster, I can hardly believe this band should really fall into oblivion. The material presented here is just too great! Rocking out four melodic and incredibly catchy, tuneful tracks, DAMASCUS produced at least two archetypical songs of the genre as it was already about to crumble apart: “Open your Eyes” and “Something on my Mind”. The vocal lines are to be heard to be believed and the guitar and bass lines make me wanna hug the guys in eternal thankfulness for such unpretentious glory! So much atmosphere, such beauty in music was soon to be driven out of Heavy Metal upon the time this EP was released and the 70s ended once and for all; Thrash and Speed bands were taking over and sure, these were exciting times and in 1984, I could hardly listen to a band like DAMASCUS anymore, so dated they sounded within months. But as you grow older, your horizon broadens (hopefully) and at least in my case, I’m now hearing the qualities of bands such as DAMASCUS clearer than I did when the record was still fresh.
“Cold Horizon” is a tricky, quiet little song, a masterpiece again and the closing “Midnight Train” is exactly what you’ll listen to on your iPod, the next time you’re on a train trip, I guarantee. I’d guess younger folks in most cases won’t get the whatabouts of such music, but I simply can not imagine anybody from the old days Metal Militia of Losers from all over the Planet (MMOLFAOTP) wouldn’t get goosebumbs over the melancholy of a song like “Open your Eyes” or “Something on my Mind”.
Enjoy this pearl! I would like to dedicate this especially to all the hellhounds and earthdogs, rivetheads and mongobumsers of the old days who are still around in one form or another.
This is post number 401 on goodbadmusic. When I was a kid, my teachers and parents kept complaining how lazy a boy I was.
Released in early 1984 on the classic italian Attack Punk Records, this was the one and only life-time record by U.B.R. (translated stands for “Rebels without a Cause”) from the city of Ljublijana, Yugoslavia (Slovenia today). This was probably the first Yugoslavian HC band I knew and I’ve loved this 7″ ever since. A totally desperate atmosphere all over – even if manic riffing breaks out, the songs never really lose the gloomy feeling. With one exception: The vitualistic, exploding, driving “Harmonija”, which is one of the all time catchy HC classics, in one leage with “Nada” by OHLO SECO or “Outo maa” by TERVEET KÄDET. A true hymn! Other highlights are “Podrazitev” and the beautiful “Od tod do vecnosti”.
Taking a closer look on the accompaning statement by the guys from ATTACK PUNK RECORDS, the label’s left radical sermon must sound weird to the guys in U.B.R. The “state machinery” of which left radicals all over the world think of a somehow autonomous, exterior clockwork that gets wind up by “senil old men”, did not destroy the world (or Italy, or Yugoslavia), but nationalism sure ripped Yuglosvia apart in a bloody sometimes genocidal war. I wonder whether the members of U.B.R. who were pacifists got involved in the wars or whether they maybe left the boiling country when there was still time. Anyway, records like this have become strange historic artifacts and the tension really seems to be conserved in the vinyl grooves, much like in the classic and absolutely essential “Hardcore Ljubljana” comp. LP. The wars in former Yugoslavia had started with Slovenias declaration of independence and the 10-days-war in 1991.
Would love to scan the complete booklet cover which is a lovely piece, but I’d first have to remove the staples and that’s something I don’t want to do.So you see the front and back only. I tell you I have spent hours in the past more than 20 years to find out what the front cover could mean, but I haven’t come to grips with the weird, almost primitivistic iconography.
This 7″ has been re-released on a discography CD, entitled “Harmonija 1983-1985″. Don’t know where you can get it, but I’m sure you’ll find out. Haven’t heard it, so I can’t say anything about the sound quality and the additional material, but in my opinion, U.B.R.’s best material was on this 7″, the “HC Lubljana” tracks were good too.
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For your ears’ pleasure, here’s a tape that wasn’t supposed to be heard. Before there was EXTREME NOISE TERROR, there was RAW NOISE, and after one of the many splits of ENT, RAW NOISE came back together. What most people don’t know is that the band had recorded a demo in 1984. Most of the songs are early, much punkier versions (with different song titles) of the classic tracks on the equally classic split LP with CHAOS UK, released by Manic Ears in late 1985. From what I remember, RAW NOISE were totally unsatisfied with this demo because it was too “clean” and sure, if you hold it against the split LP, it’s much tamer in sound. It’s also noticeable that it’s still Dean alone doing the vocals job here; Phil joined in the band shortly after these recordings were made. A great document of the state of the art of Hardcore in Europe, jut a blink of the eye away from the escalation that was about to set in.
A great tape that deserves to be dug out and exposed to your hungry ears. Download, turn up loud and enjoy!
Been very busy with working on the book and picking up work on the dissertation as well, so I’m feeling a bit burnt out and tired. Sorry for slowing things down a little with the blog.
Speaking of slowing things down: I don’t know why the cover thumbs are so heavy and taking so much bandwith. Who can help?
Totally obscure and weird piece of vinyl by DEEP SIX. Weird? Weird! One member was in Rock Bottom & the Spys and you can hear that. Who knows more?
“Ghostride” is one of the most bizarre tracks I can think of. The organ – the mouthorgan – what the fuck’s going on here? “Sick Society” (best song title ever – I wish more bands had songs called “Sick Society”) is the traditional Punker and “Watchers of Time” … I’m speechless, really. Twisted, really really twisted and with great lyrics:
«Got my brain in my hand / My foods on the table / They’re trying to pick my brain / But they’re not able / What’s deep inside will never die / Pictures of you hold just one more rhyme / Watchers of time / Watchers of time (…)»
People with tinnitus should be careful when playing “Watchers of Time” (no kidding – hear me Peter?).
As promised. here’s the repost from August 12 2006. Songs freshly ripped. What a great, great, great albeit short, short, short record! I bet KPeterD (KPD) says he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t have it. Love, peace and debauchery. 
