HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to Today, May 28, 2020

'sup, shorty?

1. The Amps, Pacer (1995, Elektra)
2. Brainoil, Brainoil (2003, Life Is Abuse)
3. Minutemen, Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat, (1983, SST)
4. Yes, The Yes Album (1971, Atlantic)
5. Dinosaur Jr., Whatever's Cool with Me (1991, Sire)
6. Operators, EP1 (2014, Last Gang)

Not an 'undo P. why I chose to listen to short records to-day, but it seemed to work out well. I've whined lengthily elsewhere / elsewhen about the bloatation allowed—seemingly mandated by the physical change from the dominant format being LPs, which stop sounding good at about the 23-minute-per-side mark, to the dominant format being CDs, which contain roughly 74 minutes, so I won't do so here, but what if bands just stopped saying things when they ran out of things to say, even if there was some tape left?

Bonus: I looked up the Amps record Pacer, because back in 1996, I considered it maybe the most perfect pop record I'd heard, and I wanted to see what other folks thought of it. And that's when I ran into this heavy slice of Robert Christgau Being a Fucking Creep:

Kim Deal sounds so sane, so unpretentious, so goddamn nice that you want to take her home and give her a shampoo.
ANI DIFRANCO: Not a Pretty Girl (Righteous Babe) Although her mostly female young cult loves this self-starting folk-punk madly, the guys I know smell trouble every time she opens her mouth. This has nothing to do with her face, body, or sense of style. It's her words, the sheer volume of them, jetting out in expressionistic torrents as if she feels free to say any goddamn thing that comes to mind.
Tribe 8, Fist City (Alternative Tentacles): lay back and trust the band, gal--also your own lyrics ("Freedom," "Barnyard Poontang")

There's more, but I don't have the stamina to go through all of his horseshit from January of 1996. Christ(gau), what an asshole.

HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to Today, May 27, 2020

Goin' back to
High school (rah rah rah)
Goin' back to
High school (sis boom bah)
Man ... I don't think so

1. Public Image Limited, Album (1986, Elektra)
   I had Cassette.
2. Suicidal Tendencies, Controlled by Hatred / Feel Like Shit ... Déjà Vu (1989, Epic)
   Possibly heavy music's most-punctuated album title?
3. Autograph, Sign In Please (1984, RCA)
   I never actually had this one, but the single "Turn Up the Radio" was inescapable. The drummer's story turns out to be the stuff of a pretty good hack novel.
4. Michael Schenker Group, MSG (1981, Chrysalis)
   Reading the tab for the solo in "On and On" turned me on to this masterpiece. No, I couldn't play it.
5. Jesus Jones, Liquidizer (1989, SBK)
   Glitched out a lot when I was listening, because my internet seems to like the heat as little as I do. It was hard to tell.
6. New Model Army, Thunder and Consolation (1989, EMI)
   Probably my second-favorite record with a song about green and grey.

No longer musing on account of obligations.

HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to Today, May 26, 2020

Old Man, Take a Listen to My Records
They're A Lot Like Yours Were

1. Spanish Love Songs, Brave Faces Everyone (2020, Pure Noise)
   I didn't know "We're not a Christian band, but we sound like a Christian band" was a sound for slow punk bands. But RIYL Mountain Goats / cool-pastor voice, drinking as a personality, shouting along. Recommended by the Strikewave newsletter.
2. NOBRO, Sick Hustle (2020, Dine Alone / Scary Monsters)
   I also didn't know "We like L7's guitar sounds" was a going concern, but based on the first song, it seems to be. Good stuff, and gets better as the record goes on! This one's from the Turntable Report by Tracy Wilson.
3. Hole, Celebrity Skin (1998, Geffen)
   Basically a perfect rock record. Ever since it's been out, I've heard a "criticism" that says "Well, Billy Corgan wrote all the songs," which (a) sounds like a depressingly common way to dismiss / diss / disappear Courtney Love, which is something dudes who like to talk about rock records are distressingly prone to do, and (b) is bizarre even if it were true, because what kind of backwards-ass nincompoop do you have to be to think "This combination of performer and songwriter works beautifully together and made a great record" is somehow a bad thing? One thing I love about the record is how confident in your work you have to be to title a poppy rock song "Heaven Tonight" after Cheap Trick wrote a basically perfect poppy rock song and called it "Heaven Tonight". Here, it works. Not sure I'd recommend the move for lesser artists.
4. Big Business, Mind the Drift (2009, Joyful Noise)
   When I first moved to Oakland, basically all I listened to was this record, in a weird track order that my busted-ass Coby .mp3 player imposed. Hearing it the "right" way is still a little disorienting.
5. Thin White Rope, Exploring the Axis (1985, Frontier)
   If Sonic Youth grew up listening to country and reading noir, they might have sounded a little like Thin White Rope.

It was a million degrees today, and I worked 11 or so hours. Not a lot of time for music, but I tried to listen to a couple new things, mostly without satisfaction, and then retreated to comforts. Those Hole, Big Business and Thin White Rope records all dominated whole years at one time or another, and it was nice to revisit them and step away from the same records I've been listening to all year long (Obsequiae's The Palms of Sorrowed Kings and El-P's Cancer for Cure, more or less). What are you trying to listen to to shake things up?

HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to Today, May 25, 2020

Hush, Keep It Down Down

1. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, I See a Darkness (1999, Palace Records)
   Got an email from my girlfriend about a Philip Levine poem that included the line "I see the darkness", so my morning was set.
2. Marriages, Salome (2015, Sargent House)
3. boygenius, boygenius (2018, Matador)
   I still have trouble with this record, but I really like Phoebe Bridgers' voice.
4. Angel Olsen, My Woman (2016, Jagjaguwar)
   Esp. "Not Gonna Kill You". Oft-recommended.
5. Flat Worms, Flat Worms (2017, Castle Face)
   Real solid punk/post-punk!
6. Red Sparowes, Aphorisms (2008, Sargent House)
7. Caterwaul, Portent Hue (1990, IRS)
8. Trans Am, Trans Am (1996, Thrill Jockey)
9. Oozing Wound, Whatever Forever (2016, Thrill Jockey)
   Probably the best workout band of our time. So many riffs.

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