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.