Ah, Berlin! What mistress are you! This shall be Toilet Guppies' first winter in the world capital of contemptorary art. (Next to its old nemesis, New York, of course.) A city where salaries are insults added to the injury of already ripe unemployment, but where alcohol is cheap. The ramshackle hedonism, tottering beneath the myths of the Weimar Republic, is wrapped in socially acceptable left wing politics (coming in whatever shape or form leftist radicals may afford), all of it housed by rather unsightly new buildings where the destructive determination of mankind has obliterated the old, as well as old buildings that remain pocked with little bullet hole reminders. This does not intimidate the ambitious bohemian. Every day a new arrival, like so many actress-waitresses flocking to LA… Dare any of us imagine what winter shall bring?
To soften the arrival of snow and below -15 degrees in such a place, Toilet Guppies submits a guppy from way down the toilet: a 1996, since-deleted German language rendition of SWANS' «Helpless Child».
When Michael Gira decided to kill off SWANS (long before their presently ongoing reunion), the band's corpse bloated into the two-disc swan song Soundtracks for the Blind, perhaps the best summary of the varied forms of the band's ethos and aesthetic on any one album. Old loops, found sounds, various live recordings and both new and old studio ones were all jabbed, stomped and stroked into a whole (or hole, whichever you prefer).
As if the resulting two hours and twenty minutes' worth of music didn't suffice, the band also issued a 51-minute «EP» of alternate versions, «Die Tür ist zu». As the Teutonic title—«the door is closed»—indicates, two of the tracks were German versions of songs off Soundtracks for the Blind. Presumably, this was a final gesture of gratitude aimed at the band's German fan base, who absolutely loathed it, cringing at the ham-fisted American accent singing words that may sound cool in exotic English but that, they were quick to realise, aren't exactly Goethe or Rilke in German.
But though the «EP»'s opening piece, «Helpless Child», features one of the least accomplished lyrics by one of rock's most unique and underappreciated wordsmiths, the music still contains one of the most sublime expressions of the band's transgressive-transcendent, Wagnerian excess, combining as it does funereal organs with brute repetition, its third movement building towards a climax that—live, at least—obliterates any sense of the body and isolates the mind in sorrow indistinguishable from joy, elation from heaviness, and the rest of it. More clearly than most of SWANS' output, it encapsulates the band's attempt at unifying opposites into one liberating whole, taking the contradictions, paradoxes and tensions of human logic, feelings and sense experience and accepting that they aren't, in fact, real, except as a totality. One in which, incidentally, you are swallowed up, momentarily relieving you of the feeling of being a separate entity, no longer an ego kicking against the will of the world.
Or something. «Helpless Child» (or «Hilflos Kind» in German) is prefixed with one of Soundtracks for the Blind's ambient noise instrumentals, «I Love You This Much» (re-Christened «Ligetí's Breath»), and so is not merely a German language rendition of the version on Soundtracks for the Blind, but an extended opus. (You know, if you needed a further incentive to download the track…)
I'd include the German version of «I See Them All Lined Up», too, but I'll save that for the day when I'm more in the mood for lyrics like: «I see their bodies in the pyre / leaking black smoke into the flames / And all the people stand around / shaping lips into my name». In German.
«Die Tür ist zu» is out of print, but Soundtracks for the Blind is still very much available, and Toilet Guppies very highly recommends that you part with money for it at the first given opportunity.
Have you of late lost all your mirth, allowing yourself to sink into despondency and fantasies of suicide made all the more pathetic because you have absolutely no intention of going through with them? Not to worry! In such times of emotional paralysis—every thought in any which direction just another imagined road to futility and regret—there's only one thing for it:
… some tape hiss to dredge the shallows of your consciousness, plus a little guitar twang and '50s aw-shucks! trembling vox to sex up the muscle memory, make you come alive again, bucking and rearing to go! If all your desire has gone limp and withered up, dissolved into the nothingness you'd like to follow it into, these sounds should do the trick. Things are never so bad kicks can't be had. (Well, not always, anyway.)
Here, then, is Dirty Beaches. They—or he, young master Alex Zhang Hung-tai—started out making homespun, lo-fi instrumental noodlings that were a little unremarkable, but exploded in 2009 with worded songs springing forth from the point where the caveman stomp of rockabilly, the motorik of krautrock, the shit of shitgaze, the aesthetic of Suicide (the band) and the ethereal, yet twisted sensuality of early David Lynch films all converge in a sultry murk of rambling, suggestive sound. Eerie, creepy, sexy sounds—the mutterings (and occasional yelps) of a confused pervert driving his lonely lorry at night, kept awake by speed and reveries I think it best not to mention.
There are few cocktails as potent as lust, fear and confusion. Did I forget fun? Man, I did not forget fun. And if you ever wondered what a grown man crawling on his hands and knees towards the custodian of his pleasure sounds like, wonder no more.
Before releasing their latest album, the highly recommended Badlands, out now on Zoo Music, those Dirty Beetches had a penchant for releasing their music on magnetic tape, and in very limited editions. Here's a sampler of the finest songs and soundscapes from those discontinued releases, starting in 2009 until more or less the present (with the exception of readily available CDs/digital albums and singles, such as Badlands, a split EP with US Girls and the «No Fun» single).
[Upload deleted by MediaFire, for «copyright infringement». The track had originally been distributed for free on the Walkmen's MySpace, and has never been commercially available. But you can still get it over at Stereogum.]
Ah, Sunday in Spring! A day owned by a band like the Walkmen. And so here's a rarity—an mp3 you could download for free off their MySpace back in 2008. It's an instrumental jam that sounds like a song sketch (probably from the sessions that produced You & Me).
In 2006, Seth Olinsky, singer-guitarist in Akron/Family, released a homespun solo album called Best of Seth, which was not only his first ever solo release but also a triple CD. The voluminous debut of greatest hits includes what could perhaps be called demos for songs given the full Akron/Family band treatment on the Angels Of Light/Akron/Family split CD («Raising the Sparks») and Meek Warrior («Meek Warrior», «No Space in This Realm», «Love and Space»). Olinsky's first and only solo album has since gone out of print.
Of course, two hours and 43 minutes of out-of-tune hippie whimsy can be a bit much. A man can only stand so much Dzogchen Buddhist imagery backed by campfire strumming, front porch banjo picking, strained singing, mystical drones, kitchen sink electronica and the recorder. Toilet Guppies is proud, therefore, to present the best of Best of Seth—a one-stop volume of delights and highlights. And if the above didn't come across as a particularly glowing blurb, if you like your music with a spiritual quotient—and by «spiritual» I don't just mean sincerely emotional, but curious, inquisitive and downright soteriological about this life business and all the big mysteries that come with it—give this comp a whirl. It's beautiful:
Toilet Guppies has made it a point of order to make available to the obscure Norwegian noise loving internet masses—all four of them—any and every out-of-print rarity ever committed to a recording device by producer Helge Sten, a/k/a ambient noise composer Deathprod. (Except recordings never printed in the first place.) Not that there are many; there's the majestic live percussion piece «Komet» and one spoken word collab with American expat poet Matt Burt.
And now «Microwave 1-5», five short pieces of ambient noise made, according to the liner notes, «using the same source material» as two additional tracks by John Hegre and four by relentless noise pioneer Lasse Marhaug (all on the CD, but not included here), both of Jazzkammer fame. What that source material was isn't mentioned.
Whatever the original sounds mangled far beyond recognition, you could do worse on a foetal Sunday than listen to these snippets of typically meditative (but never New Age-y) Deathprod. atmospherics. Curl yourself up, bub. You don't stand a chance.
Been browsing the old iTunes library for something rare but Sunday-like, and came across these dreamy, currently out-of-print ditties. Before the Dodos became a band, its singer-guitarist Meric Long recorded an EP, «Dodo Bird», in 2006. It's basically the same musical universe: bluegrass fingerpicking, syncopated acoustic strumming and percussion inspired by West African rhythms, all bursting from within the melancholy bounds of wistful words and soft melodies. Happy Sunday, people.
While we wait for the album currently most anticipated here at Toilet Guppies', HTRK's Work (Work, Work) (to be released in about five months' time), the band is currently offering a live album, recorded in 2008, over at their website.
Not very well known—nor will they ever be if they continue to explore, in such a stubborn manner, what most people would rather avoid, all the more so because it's always there, that hum underlying your very existence—HTRK is still the most interesting «art rock» outfit since Flux Information Sciences. But unlike Flux Info, HTRK doesn't dilly-dally with things like distracting or ameliorating humour. Their music is not the type to cowardly put on a brave face, forcing itself to qualify, always unconvincingly, «… but it's not that bad.» Or to find other ways of looking away.
You can be indifferent about many things. Most things. Sorrow and sex are not among them, which is what gives HTRK its emotional currency. While other indie bands tend their hairdos and seek out people with whom to schmooze like so many gold diggers at the yacht club, so that they may better peddle the ditties they've slapped together with a view to becoming rich and adored by the snivelling and the stupid, HTRK takes care of business. Music was made for dealing with these things—pain, boredom, desire—and not for certain people to have their narcissistic exhibitionism indulged, their desperate need for validation met or their pointlessly ambitious greed gratified. When you've lost all faith in music—when every recording artist comes across as either a scenester or just plain bland—a band like HTRK comes around, offering you hope with their brand of hopelessness.
I'm sure that wasn't their intention, but there you go. Take it as a gift. Then go buy their live album.
[The above mp3, by the way, has nothing to do with the live album. It was a free give-away, downloaded off their MySpace some months back. Although a demo, it's as good as the songs on their records (and certainly boasts higher production values than their debut). Fuck the hyperbole, it's really very, very good. One of their best. So far.]
What kind of beast are the Black Angels? They stand for many things easy to despise: They promulgate shameless time warp nostalgia—in their case, idealisation of a one-dimensional, cartoonish idea of the '60s. (Songs even reference the Vietnam War, ferchrissakes.) Like good children of postmodernism, they appropriate the art and image of more famous or street credible artists of the past in order to further their own career. (The band name was derived from a song by the Velvet Underground, and they use an iconic image of Nico as their logo.) Their lyrics are often embarrassing—more like a sequence of rhymes than actual poetry, with little substance to indicate any of them are older than 13. Nico it ain't.
But despite their corny yet perfectly po-faced «turn on, tune in, drone out» psychedelia revival schtick (employing Native American imagery, presumably to automatically render the whole thing somehow «spiritual»), the Black Angels' first slew of self-produced EPs and albums combined primitive rhythms, scuzzy bass grooves, sultry tremolo guitars and tambourines like rattlesnakes, occasionally punctuated by neck hair-raising screams, making for eminently danceable rock'n'roll that made you gag for the sex and drugs to complete the equation. For all the bullshit image bullshit, the music was great. Devoid of silly little pop hooks, it had a slightly menacing, creeping underbelly feel, lurking beneath the rhythmically hypnotic swagger. It's so hard to find music to dance to that isn't yet another fucking celebration of this, that or the other, or just pacifying and diverting and completely irrelevant to any human emotion with grit. Live, the Black Angels made you want to grab whichever person was immediately next to you and fuck them up against the nearest wall. They had balls. (The band, I mean, not the person you may or may not have been fucking up against the wall. But with that soundtrack, who cares? Buy copies of Passover and Directions to See a Ghost and hear for yourself…)
For their third full-length, the Black Angels enlisted a producer. (The guy behind this.) The result—last autumn's Phosphene Dream—isn't as raw, is a bit more uneven, but at least it's more varied, expanding upon what could easily have become a formula.
There was a promotional push where you could pre-order the album. You got a couple of mp3s at once, then a little later the digital album as you waited for the CD in the post. After the release date, however, four other versions of Phosphene Dream were unveiled, each with its own set of bonus tracks—none of which came with the version purchased directly off the band's website. iTunes' edition featured two bonus tracks («Melanie's Melody», «Ronettes»), Amazon's another («My Boat Is Sinking»), ShockHound's yet another («At Night») and Napster—where you have to buy an additional subscription just for access—offered an additional two («Choose to Choose», «Raindance Song»). In all cases, the bonus mp3s were only made available if you bought the entire album. That's four copies of Phosphene Dream (not counting the regular edition perhaps already purchased in other record stores or on the band's website). If you have a US credit card, that is—most of these «exclusive»/«deluxe» versions aren't even available elsewhere.
It's a puzzling marketing ploy that's becoming more and more common among indie labels. The artist is exploited and the music lover fucked, just so that a few distributors may cash in—marginally. Worse than unethical—there are more important things in the news—it's stupid.
For the Black Angels, it was a continuation of an unfortunate trend that began with their sophomore album, which was similarly pushed before its release date with an offer any obsessive completist couldn't resist: pre-order it and you got an exclusive, limited edition EP. An EP that may currently be purchased through the group's website, just like any other CD. I'm looking forward to the episode of «Mad Men» where they invent the use of the words «exclusive» and «limited edition» to move product. It would've been in the 1960s, judging from the Black Angels…
In any case, if you're miffed or feel gypped by the Black Angels' shifty record company Blue Horizon (which doesn't even have a website), here's a little something to cheer you up:
Toilet Guppies isn't rap's biggest fan. But if you need a break from touchy-feely singer/songwriter fare, cathartic rock'n'roll, catatonic ambient, mindfucking electro or spine-warbling noise, here's one of the very few rap rarities in Toilet Guppies' collection—a yet to be released track from 2008 by Red Café. I have no clue who he is, but apparently Diddy a.k.a. P. Diddy a.k.a. Puff Daddy a.k.a. Puff a.k.a. Puffy a.k.a. Sean John a.k.a. Sean Combs makes an appearance (seen below, shocked at the appearance of a one dollar bill among his regular, heavyweight denominations).
I know, I know… but the track is actually good. It's easily the best song about money Toilet Guppies has ever heard, with eminently quotable lines such as «Blocka blocka blocka / Money money money / Any given day I'm pourin' honey on your money and I murder everybody»!
¡España! A land untouched by Toilet Guppies… Most of the people who check out this blog do so from IP-addresses in Indonesia (hello, Indonesia!), so in an attempt to break Spain and the 30 per cent of South America that isn't Brazil (no offense, Indonesia), I have put together a primer of Spanish-language rock'n'roll, as a tribute to all my Spanish friends (all three or four of 'em—and that's counting the Catalans), one Mexican acquaintance, some Peruvian regrets and three Norwegians I know who are trying to learn Spanish.
For a northern European infected with Protestantism, it's immensely beautiful to see how in Spain people know how to enjoy life and the moment they're in. Like when they're indulging in an absolutely delicious cuisine (one of the world's tastiest!) that, once you take a bite, sends a message throughout your entire body that this shit is unhealthy, the mortality it reminds you of making you feel more alive, not like you're merely preserving your body with all these nutritionally correct foodstuffs.
Spain! The land where they still indulge in bloody, brutal animal sacrifice in public. (Still in touch with what it is to be human, warts and all…) Where you can buy witchcraft paraphernalia in run-of-the-mill specialist shops that aren't even considered weird or unusual. (Keeping the mystery alive…) Where the brown eyed girls' voices are as sensually rough and gravelly as the coffee is smooth and rich… Where the sun actually warms!
Even in the bars, they give you napkins made out of paper that doesn't absorb, so that you have to use a ridiculously extravagant amount of them. And due to a complete and systematic lack of bins in these bars, like a naughty child you have to gleefully throw all those discarded tissues right onto the nasty floor, until at the end of the day you're sat in an oversized ashtray and they finally sweep up the rubbish and the ashes and cigarette butts (because no health freaks refuse you to smoke in public in Spain!). Only then will they put all of that trash in a bin liner that, in more practical cultures, it all went straight into in the first place… And let's not forget the siesta—two hours of sleep or fucking in the middle of the work day, which snowballs your schedule to the point where you don't eat dinner until ten at night—again, against the express advice of your physician.
These self-indulgent, non-functionalistic routines, rituals and ways to go about everyday life, some of them bordering on the idiotic, all amount to one defiant rebellion against the grinding boredom, grim inevitabilities and unhappy accidents of human existence. Rationality's got nuthin' on the complexity and immensity of life, to the point where living your life sensibly isn't sensible at all, so you may as well move to Spain and enjoy yerself!
Or, in lieu of that, listen to some great Spanish-language music, from Spain and equally groovy (if not more so) South America—where mothers pushing prams sexually harrass you in the street and little Lolitas on scooters wolf whistle like hardened construction workers as they drive past. Where the girls are fiery and prone to a violence that defies the dull demands and expectations heaped upon their gender.
Naturally, in the long run the Latin passion, heat, possessiveness, faked intimacy and lack of both punctuality and a neat social order will prove grating on a northern European, but let's pretend I'm not Norwegian for now and that the New World of South America is the Promised Land. In such a promised land, I would like the soundtrack to sound something like this:
These dilettante rockers didn't invent or even re-invent the wheel, but they made something that lasts to this day—a mix of fun, sex and anxiety that's unaffected by nostalgia, irony, pretentions of cool, etc. In addition to a couple of deranged Peruvian originals (check out the cojones on track 21! And 22 gives Norwegian black metal a run for its money any day), there's the unexpected rendition of Desmond Dekker's golden ska oldie «Israelites», as well as a whole host of Spanish language covers of British and US American garage rock staples like «Hey Joe», «Gloria», «Pushin' too Hard», «Little Girl», «Take a Heart», «19th Nervous Breakdown», «For Your Love»… There's the ultimate version of «Wild Thing», rather freely translated as «Loco te patina el coco», performed by some joker calling himself Juan El Matemático (who competes with Los Johnny Jets for best artist name on this comp). Bo Diddley's no-nonsense warning «Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut» becomes even less of a compromise as «Hey, monstro».
Incidentally, there's only one group on here from Spain (I think—some of them I don't know where the hell they're from). Others are from Mexico, some Colombia, some Peru, one from Brazil. I suspect Argentina, Chile and/or Uruguay (or was it Paraguay?) may also be represented, but who knows and who cares, it's all in Spanish and it kicks culo. Some of these tracks are so obscure you wouldn't even be able to find them on secondhand vinyl—you're lucky to get them as low bitrate mp3s after thoroughly scouring the Internet for amateurish Third World music obsessives' dodgy uploads, so don't come pissing and moaning just because some of the tracks are as low as 160kbps and full of vinyl crackle and hiss. The wildest music most true to the spirit of rock'n'roll was never about high fidelity, anyway.
So, roqueros y roqueras, bring out the tapas, cocaine and sexism, and rock out to these scuzzy southern sounds of the '60s. ¡Viva España! and all of her former colonies and la revolución! Rock y roll!
Jana Hunter occupies an odd space, not quite fitting in with the suburban-garden-goblin-gone-metropolitan-hippie-bohemian fantasy crowd, nor with more brooding singer-songwriters whose words dribble derision on the stock sentiment of «love & light.» In equal measure, there's something for nerds and something for Nihilists on Hunter's albums.
Although far more subtle than most exponents of Freak-Folk/Weird-Nu-Americana-whatnot, Hunter is one of its most remarkable artists—in part because she's more subtle. There's no sunny San Fran fluff here, nor contrived eccentricity; what there is, is a certain kind of mumbly murk that sets her work apart from sunshine psychedelia and willfully naïve folk, and is more reminiscent of, say, Skip Spence or Sly Stone (ca. There's a Riot Goin' On)—only without that nervous breakdown feel to it.
Yet it's not doom & gloom; there's humour, there's positivity. The good and the bad are inextricably interwoven, not separable at all in Hunter's recordings. Everything simply is as it is, as Hunter reports it without judgment, obsession or attachment. This may be the closest popular music gets to Buddhist mysticism, simply by virtue of the music just being itself, without contrivance. There seems to be no agenda, no message, no ambition, even. What you get is merely what it says on the tin.
Not that it's easy to read what it says on that there tin. Everything about the words and music seems to occupy the space in between the lines. There doesn't appear to be a commitment towards anything, and although that may sound boring, it's actually a kind of revelation, as Hunter tiptoes through a minefield of masculine hatred and feminine love, guiding you safely to somewhere you've never even thought about, where no one wants to crush, own, smother, penetrate, enter or subsume you. And surely, the sweetest embrace is a lullaby telling you (as on personal favourite «Black Haven») «to never, ever wake up»?
These tracks are all from an untitled, out-of-print, split vinyl-only album released in 2005 on Troubleman Unlimited, with Devendra Banhart on the other side. My transfer is a bit shoddy, I'll admit, but Toilet Guppies makes no excuses: This is what vinyl sounds like, and when they only released the material on this format, that's what you get. I'm not about to spend hours «restoring» music I bought new and mint on a supposedly superior format. These transfers are still far, far better than nothing. Or, if you're a Nihilist, damn near as good as nuthin:
A few days ago, Pitchfork reported that Nas is having a public dispute with his record label, after an email from him to Def Jam executives was leaked. Apparently, the rapper is outraged that his second volume of outtakes(!) is not being marketed aggressively enough by Def Jam.
Reading Nas' rant, it's interesting to note that a man who makes his living on words—streams and streams of rhythmically delivered swashbuckling and vaguely expressed hype about how Nas and his homies roll/do/wear/drink/smoke things and perform various activities (without really specifying anything, except perhaps where exaggerated and usually unprovoked threats are concerned)—a man ostensibly so gifted with the gab cannot spell. Yet let's not lower ourselves to petty pedantry. What's far funnier than ignorance of spelling, words and their meanings are the sky high pretensions of a wordsmith who uses so many words to say so little. Idiocy is only funny (rather than just depressing) when the fool thinks him- or herself profound, or otherwise blessed with superiority of historical importance. Thankfully, then, Nas' lack of logic (or just a set of relatively coherent values) gives us some of the most entertaining statements coming out of hip-hop in 2010:
From: Nas To: LA Reid, Steve Bartels, Steve Gawley, Michael Seltzer, Joseph Borrino, Chris Hicks Subject: PUT MY SHIT OUT!
Peace to all,
With all do [sic] respect to you all, Nas is NOBODY's slave. This is not the 1800's, respect me and I will respect you.
I won't even tap dance around in an email, I will get right into it. People connect to the Artist [sic] @ the end of the day, they don't connect with the executives. Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its [sic] the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist's dream and aspirations. You don't help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren't.... not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn't work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn't understand RAP. Pretty fucked up situation [sic]
This isn’t the 90's though. Beefing with record labels is so 15 years ago. @ this point I just need you all to be very clear where I stand and how I feel about «my label.» I could go on twitter [sic] or hot 97 tomorrow [sic] and get 100,000 protesters @ your building but I choose to walk my own path my own way because since day one I have been my own man. I did business with Tommy Mottola and Donnie Einer, two of the most psycho dudes this business ever created. I worked well with them for one major reason……. [sic] they [sic] believed in me. The [sic] didn't give a fuck about what any radio station or magazine said….those [sic] dudes had me.
Lost Tapes is a movement and a very important set up piece for my career as it stands. I started this over 5 years ago @ Columbia and nobody knew what it was or what it did but the label put it out as an LP and the fans went crazy for it and I single handedly built a new brand of rap albums. It's smart and after 5 years it's still a head [sic] of the game. This feels great and you not feeling what I’m feeling is disturbing. Don't get in the way of my creativity. We are aligned with the stars here, this is a movement. There is a thing called KARMA that comes to haunt you when you tamper with the aligning stars. WE ARE GIVING THE PEOPLE EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT. Stop throwing dog shit on a MAGICAL moment.
You don't get another Nas recording that doesn't count against my deal….PERIOD! Keep your bullshit $200,000.00 fund. Open the REAL budget. This is a New York pioneers ALBUM, there ain't many of us. I am ready to drop in the 4th quarter. You don’t even have shit coming out! Stop being your own worst enemy. Let's get money!
-N.Jones [my italics]
Interesting that a guy whose creative endeavours mainly consist of self-centred bullshitting about bling and sexual and violent bravado, invokes the words «karma» and «soul» (and «truth», as coming from the «innermost» «depths» of this purported spiritual self). One minute he's the tortured artist castrated by the Man, the next he's giving a fat cat money maker's pep talk—as if he can't decide whether he wants to battle the unjust deprivation suffered by his multitudes of fans, all ready to fight for a much larger budget to promote a second volume of outtakes (unless they're already «dying», that is), or whether he simply wants more cash to buy gold chains and some nouveau riche decor worthy of an MTV reality show episode.
Be that as it may, when delusions of grandeur meet the limitations of reality, a Messiah complex is born. But if you want to be Christ, you need to be prepared for the crucifixion. Actually, Nas is loving it, which is why he's inventing this persecution in the first place.
It takes a certain something—or someone—to make you side with a big corporation for once. Unlike Saul Williams, rapper of substance who was given producer Salaam Remi's incredible backing track to Nas' «Made You Look» (and Amy Winehouse's «In My Bed») to say something actually relevant to someone beyond only Nas himself. Whether you agree with Williams' political sentiments or not, at least he's not just gazing into his own diamond encrusted navel.
We can't recall when and where we came across Williams' rare recording, but it was ages ago. «Made You Look (instrumental with guns)» was the B-side to Nas' by now out of print CD single «Made You Look», which, in all fairness, is a monster. Nas may not be the sharpest shiv on the cell block, but the man's got flow and a voice:
(Rambling hidden track tape collage, unfortunately mediocre remix by UNKLE and predictably mortifying remix by unsuitably sexless, anemic vegan finger pointing PC activist dick Moby not included.)
[Here's a new series of posts with music from unknowns, witnessed randomly upon going out in Berlin—provided the artist has a CD for sale after the show. First off is Berlin expat trio Strange Forces:]
The «healing power» of music is a cliché too old and prevalent to dignify with pooh-poohing. Nevertheless, it's easy to forget—amid all these music videos, viral YouTube campaigns, city billboards, stylists and blogs—that music can indeed channel spiritual currency. That there is music that's more than just the vehicle for one person's vanity, coupled with one company's greed.
I don't know what drives Brisbane, Australia's Strange Forces—perhaps they, too, merely want to fulfill some banal childhood dream of glitz and adulation—teenage dreams of cheap thrills and that ol' coke-pussy-validation triumvirate—rather than genuinely connect with something sincere through their music. But their live show certainly makes it sound as if they're serious about the spiritual possibilities in sound. Drenched in drones, reverb, fuzz, swirling melodies and scuzzy bass frequencies, this is transporting stoner music for the type of introspection forgotten by (or simply unknown to) most artists desperately styling themselves to make the scene.
And Strange Forces don't fit the hipster bill of electro/techno Berlin. The psychedelic trio plays something as untrendy as rock—space rock, to boot! Very uncool, but oh! so good… Toilet Guppies caught them by coincidence at Berlin's recently shut down Raum 18, expecting the noise fare common to this city, so caught unawares by Strange Forces' heady melodies and echoey, voluminous sound—a cocoon in which the mind curled up in a long-awaited foetal position.
So here are a couple of tracks from their first two, self-released efforts—one CD of band material that would have benefitted from a more adventurous producer/more competent (or less competent?) engineer, and one EP of «ambient» stuff that basically consists of instrumentals without live drums. (Apparently this is to showcase the band's talents to venues that, due to Berlin's public noise policy, don't allow drummers. Poor skinsman…)
Anyhoo, enjoy a swirling, computer-glitchy drone piece from their untitled ambient EP and the highlight from their equally untitled debut as a trio: a psych-summery sunkiss with a track title worryingly reminiscent of fantasy role-play or New Age Egyptianism («Fields of Aaru»?!), but that still delivers the goods, fear ye not. This is headphone music for a summer's day in the park, pure and sweet and smelling of death, not the petite one but the Big Sleep, a daydream of the Ancient Egyptian afterlife—«the fields of reeds.» This hypnotic song is a flash forward into triumphant jettisoning from this plane, the deathwish come good like an innocent and beautiful kind of homesickness when you're already on your way and all that's left is to wait. Sweet anticipation as even the patch of grass you're sprawled out on is just a vessel eventually carrying you along to the final station.
This is two-year old news, so no news at all, but it's news to Toilet Guppies as we're a bit slow to catch on:
Chic and gorgeous trio of sumptuous, sad and sexy pop music for the baroque and slightly psychedelic adult, the magnificent Blonde Redhead, wrote and recorded the original score to a documentary about enthusiasts of the role-playing game of choice for sensual nerds of distinction, Dungeons & Dragons!
Thankfully, the combination of exquisite music, documentary film and geekshow is only almost too good to be true:
Here's one for all you aspiring authors out there…
As indicated by the recent lack of writerly activity on this here blog, Toilet Guppies has been grappling and wrestling with the written word, always losing. It simply won't do to keep penning the same old improvised blog fluff, rambling and inconsequential, so I turned to the Fall's Mark E. Smith and his «Guide to Writing Guide»:
Day 1: Hang around house all day, writing bits of useless information on bits of paper.
Day 2: Decide lack of inspiration due to too much isolation and non-fraternisation—go to pub! Have drinks.
Day 3: Get up and go to pub. Hold on in there as style is on its way. Through sheer boredom and drunkenness, talk to people in pub.
Day 4: By now, people in the pub should be continually getting on your nerves. Write things about them on backs of beermats.
Day 5: Go to pub. This is where true penmanship stamina comes into its own, as by now guilt, drunkenness, the people in the pub and the fact you're one of them should combine to enable you to write out of sheer vexation… to write out of sheer vexation.
Day 6: If possible, stay home. And write. If not, go to pub.
This really rather splendid advice was recorded for radio in 1983, when Smith's words were still somewhat intelligible—before his meth jaw had turned the inside of his mouth into a chewed-up pulp out of which slurred half-syllables of beer-slobber drop limply onto the floor, the meaning of his speech conveyed not by words but by its constantly sarcastic tone of voice. (Quite clever, really; who can tell whether you can still write, let alone review your stuff, if they can't understand a word of what you're saying?)
So if you, like Toilet Guppies, were disappointed by this year's dismal Fall album—which sounds as if it were backed by a band of random pub yobs playing amateur covers of '90s Rollins Band funk metal jams—have a listen to Mark E. Smith's hilarious but actually quite sensible guide to writing, as well as his ruminations on some of current civilisation's most exciting cities («Amsterdam», «London»), recitation of seemingly random newspaper clippings and, from sometime much later than 1983, a mysterious and eloquently scathing attack on artists who do what Smith himself is doing these days («I'm Bobby»):
Get ahead with your puerile, slurred-word rigmarole and put it out. On the lids, it's down, congealed both the rest of your post-nearly, half-realised, bird-like thoughts clogging the solo '70s or new intellectual skinhead morass!
Whether hilarious self-loathing, a parody of a critic or a cutting down to size of some imitator who remains anonymous (except that he's called Bobby-something), it takes one to know one and it's a fair cop—and a masterly written one, at that…
So, enjoy:
Mark E. Smith's Guide to Writing Guide
London
Manchester
«The rouge smeared on the aged profile of the local THF Cologne branch chairman»
Village Bug
Amsterdam
«A piece I found in an international newspaper on the floor»
Tonight, it's off to see nu-hippie/Freak Folkie-cum-unlikely hipster style icon Joanna Newsomdo Berlin. And so here are some rarities by the girly-voiced harpist—selections from self-released and now discontinued EPs from 2002 and -3.
Newsom forever teeters on the edge of going too far or being too much, her undeniable talent only just balancing the cutesy and nerdy elfishness of the fantasy genre, as indulged in by a middle class youngster who has yet to experience life outside of books. Too much incense and velvet, too little… well, there's no need to be crude.
Yet Newsom's sense of melody and of syllables are evident. And her work was never derivative, already impressively sculpted and accomplished at the very outset. Debut album proper, The Milk-eyed Mender, is an even work of dreamy beauty with a sound and universe unlike any other album or artist. Subsequent work by Newsom was perhaps a tad pretentious (the sprawling, never-ending Ys) or confusing (the R&B-inflected Have One on Me, which may just as well be thought of as more experimental as it could a sell-out).
So we're staying with her early work. Before The Milk-eyed Mender came out, many of its songs had been self-released by Newsom in what could be called demo versions. Those EPs—«Walnut Whales» and «Yarn and Glue»—are currently out of print, but fret not: here are the highlights, including a few numbers that never saw release on subsequent albums.
The ultimate goal of Toilet Guppies is to exhaust its creator's collection of worthwhile rarities until at last he can stop posting, leaving the blog to sink or float on this interweb-thingy, music too good to disappear hopefully still only a Google and a click away. Looking at the dwindling list of rarities on my computer, it seems I've reached the tail-end of this blog's existence, so the random mp3s to be posted onwards might appear to be leftovers, but let me assure you that quality control is as strict as ever(!).
Today is Sunday, which means I have to post music that's either calm or melancholy. Hence one of the greatest songs to be made available on this blog: Einstürzende Neubauten's initial, acoustic version of Alles Wieder Offen opener «Die Wellen», recorded for the band's Musterhaus series in 2006. Blixa Bargeld is accompanied by classical composer and pianist Ari Benjamin Meyers.
The lyrics showcase how Bargeld writes like none other in music, scientific conundrums becoming metaphors for something that's hard to define or understand, but which seems intensely existential—an impression only strengthened by Bargeld's increasingly impassioned delivery and Meyers' insistent, urgent piano hammering. This time around Bargeld's subject matter is Homo Sapiens' old nemesis, impermanence. The never-ending movement of waves—these entities in concept only that cannot even be distinguished from one another (for where does one wave end and the other begin?)—is the perfect image of unstoppable, irreversible change, wind never resting, water never still, nothing ever the same even for an instant. There aren't any «instants», everything a continual flow. This is the famous root of suffering, although Buddhists forget that it's also the root of pleasure. But for now, is the thing you desire staying, or what?!
What should I do with you, waves, you who can never decide whether you’re the first or the last? You think you can define the coast with your constant wish-wash, grind it down with your coming and going. And yet no one knows how long the coastline really is, where land stops, where land begins, and you’re forever changing the line, length, lay, with the moon and unpredictable.
Consistent alone is your inconsistency.
Ultimately victorious since, as so often evoked, this wears away the stones, grinds the sand down as fine as needed for hourglasses and egg-timers, as required for calibrating time, for telling the difference between hard and soft.
Victorious also because, never tiring, you win the contest who of us will be the first to fall asleep, or you, being the ocean still, because you never sleep.
Although colourless yourself, you seem blue when the sky is gently mirrored on your surface, the ideal course for being strolled upon by the carpenter’s son, the most changeable element.
And inversely, when you are wild and loud and your breakers thunder, I listen between the peaks of your rollers, and from the highest waves, from breaking spume, a thousand voices break away, mine, yesterday’s ones that I didn’t know, that otherwise just whisper, and all the others too, and in their midst the Nazarene. Over and over again those stupendous five final words: Why have you left me?
I hold my own, shout at each single wave: Are you staying? Are you staying? Are you staying, or what?
If there's one thing worse than nostalgia, it's irony. Yet sometimes there are people—you might know some—who actually manage to combine these two forms of escapism into one exceptionally annoying way of running from reality. They play and listen to retro music that makes them feel warm and safe due to a (mistakenly) perceived innocence of the «good old days», while at the same time guffawing at the naffness of it, lest they be perceived as corny by their peers—the cardinal sin of uptight, hung-up, self-conscious hipster doofi everywhere. (If you're wondering, yes, «doofi» is hereby plural for «doofus».) It's like a bulimic's version of having your cake and eating it too. In this way, they distance themselves from the relentlessly confronting nature of reality, both through lulling themselves into believing in something nice that never was and by not taking anything seriously.
And it's hard to like vintage music (or vintage anything) without being accused of nostalgia—or of taking the piss. Yet all decades and centuries offer at least some music that is still valid. «Trendiness» is just another word for «dated», but sometimes—and despite itself—even something easily dated possesses some kind of timeless quality. Believe it or not, there are songs from past decades that aren't guilty pleasures, nor quaint and cosy mementos for people to run to when they're feeling vulnerable and they need the safe feeling of something familiar.
There are legions of people moaning about the nowadays. You know the ones, prone to «they-don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to» type arguments. With '60s garage rock music, for instance, the subculture is lousy with DJs and compilers who always focus on the most saccharine examples of the era—the bubbly harmonies, the anthemic melodies, the feelgood vibe, the puppet-like shaking of bobs—giving the entire decade a false and pathetically rosy hue, colouring its music output innocent and naïve. The nostalgic person is always a revisionist, and we don't approve of that stuff here on this blog.
No, sir. We like our '60s music alive and kicking, as sweaty and scruffy now as it was back then! We want rude 'tude and rawness with our garage rock! We prefer the stuff that doesn't merely sound cute, 50 years on. We want balls, wet with sweat, and possibly other fluids. We want mean drums, nasty guitars and snarling vocals. And if you love that too, you'll like today's Toilet Guppies comp:
Somewhere on the interweb, there's a mysterious man by the name of Dan who possesses in his garage a collection of old 45s that you simply have to take your hat off to. 1960s amateur rock from North America, Europe, Australia, &c. that probably only a handful of autistic record collectors who were punks in the '80s are already familiar with. Dan rips these neglected little vinyl babies and graciously shares them with '60s rock enthusiasts on his blog, detailing info on each forgotten (and in many cases never known) act.
Quite a few of the 45s have appeared—usually in more doctored, cleaned up form—on various garage compilations: the definitive Nuggets boxes, the overrated Pebbles series, the underrated Garage Beat '66 set, the no-nonsense Back from the Grave volumes, the mind blowingly comprehensive Mindrocker comps, the obscurity-truffling Teenage Shutdown collections… And these are just a few in a confusing and expensive array of multi-volumed series of various artists collections compiling ineptly recorded and incompetently performed inane compositions that, despite and because of it all, blow your mind and kick your arse! Dan also does us the favour of ripping B-sides that in many cases never made it onto the mess of garage compilations for sale out there.
So far, Dan has posted 29 volumes(!) in his ongoing series of rare vinyl rips, each volume containing 28 to 31 tracks. (You do the math.) I recommend you go check them out. By way of introduction, I've compiled some favourites—although I've avoided those songs that are already featured on commercially available digital downloads or CDs (that I know of, at least), such as artist retrospectives or compilations like the ones mentioned above. (The only exception is the inclusion of rip-roarin' «Rich with Nothin'» by the Split Ends, which as far as I know only exists on CD on Trash Box—Wild Psychotic Garage Punk!!!, but in an anti-social vinyl transfer that is so insanely tinny it'll give you instant tinnitus. Dan's rip sounds far punchier.)
Dan's transfers haven't been given the vinyl restoration treatment. These 45s are often scratched and worn, but this excessive surface noise somehow adds to the already poorly engineered, badly played music. This is rock'n'roll, with organic and imperfect textures that the record industry would have you believe is wrong, but which is symbolic of the artists' fun-loving enthusiasm for the energy of music, perfect or no, and which provides them and us with so much unbridled glee. Hi-fi perfectionism is the aural equivalent of anal retentive inhibition, and we can't have that. This scruffy stuff may be a sin against technology and Capitalism, but that only makes it better.
So Toilet Guppies hereby prescribes a submersion of your ears in a sea of warm and fuzzy static. Stomp along to the primitive rhythm, from your heart down to your good foot. Swirl to the distortion! Clap yer hands! Play that air tambourine! This stuff will make you feel alive. Sometimes nasty. In fact, it'll make you feel a little like when your eyes hone in on the holes at the centre of the 45s in the picture above. This is a collection of the best in ultra-rare garage rock—songs so obscure they shouldn't be good! Yet somehow they are… It's a bit of a conundrum how something so mediocre could actually be so great, but it's out of place to overthink these simple songs. Anyway, the tracklist is as follows: (For info on the acts, just follow the links in the artist name to Dan's relevant blog posts.)
1. The Judge 'N Jury: «Roaches» Dan calls this a novelty song, whereas I prefer to view the lyrics' omnipresent cockroaches as a misanthropic, if humorous, metaphor for people. The narrator ends up marrying one, then fathering several. Could it be a snide attack on the bourgeoisie? In any case, even a novelty song is better than the standard boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl, «I want to hold your hand» type lyrics as prevalent in the genre as cockroaches are in this song.
2. The Hysterical Society: «I Know» Move over, rap. A surprising barrage of verbiage in this soulful stomp rocker. I can't catch the words, but they sound cool… Then the drummer loses his cool towards the end and the track erupts!
3. The Pineapple Heard: «Valleri» Normally this would be a tad poppy for my liking. Still, you can't deny that the steady drums, the eminently hummable melody and the dreamy back-up harmonies make the song irrepressibly catchy. And the riff, so cheery and innocent, is delivered nastily enough that it works. If it sounds strangely familiar, the Fall quote/plagiarise this riff on «Barmy», a song off their 1985 masterpiece This Nation's Saving Grace.
4. The Shags: «It Hurts Me Bad» Again, a little soft for me normally, but the laid back cool, the soul syncopation and the hand claps put it over the edge. The Shags were from the US, but this sounds like a perfect slice of freakbeat, more restrained and stiff upper lip'ed than the garage-psych punk fuzz freak-outs of North America.
5. King Bees: «On Your Way Down the Drain» Cow bell and hand claps! Probably the most sensational find in Dan's garage is this song which, unaccountably, isn't one of those household hits everyone knows from the '60s. (But then I suppose it doesn't really fit in on the Forrest Gump soundtrack.) Everything comes together in this forgotten recording by a neglected act: the catchy melody, a driving rhythm, scathing lyrics, snarling attitude and biting delivery… It even sports high production values, with varied instrumentation (a harpsichord sweetening the bitterness in the chorus). It's perfect as is. And a remarkable love song: a vitriolic attack on a lover who hasn't even done anything! Never before has a love song been so hateful:
I don't know, and don't wanna find out 'Bout the money you had I don't know, and don't wanna find out Good friends that went bad But if you keep foolin' around Causin' ev'rybody pain Don't forget to wave to me, darlin' On your way down the drain
And I don't know, and don't care to find out 'Bout all the places you've been I don't know, and don't care to find out All the chances you've had to sin But if you keep foolin' around Talkin' about your losses and gain Don't forget to wave to me, darlin' On your way down the drain
I don't know, and don't wanna find out What a good person you are I don't know, and don't wanna find out How you coulda been a star But if you keep foolin' around Drivin' ev'rybody insane Don't forget to wave to me, darlin' On your way down the drain
I don't know, but if I were to find out That you cheated on me I don't know, but maybe I will find out Then you'll surely see I won't care to know what you feel inside Or what's goin' on in your brain I'll just sit here and wave to you, darlin' On your way down the drain
Wow. Check out the 'tude! What a hilariously unnecessary bitch slap, with a little paranoid flourish there at the end as well… Well, everyone gets on someone else's nerves sometimes, and a song for when that special someone gets on yer tits can be a good thing to have, I suppose…
6. 'Twas Brillig: «This Week's Children» A bona-fide floor stomper to have you dancing like it's 1966, complete with the singer's delicious freak-out towards the end…
7. The Mugwumps: «I Don't Wanna Know» Another mean love song. At least it's honest:
Cry your eyes out over me Don't you see, don't you see All the things they said are true I'll be mean to you
I don't want to know I don't want to know I don't want to know About you
You gave me all the love you had Made me glad, made me glad Go find yourself another boy I'll only make you cry
The singer doesn't say why he doesn't «want to know about» the girl, but the song combines an odd consideration for her future well-being with being brutally unapologetic. All set to a highly danceable tune. Few songwriters write catchy songs delivering unnecessarily cruel rejection anymore. Songwriters these days are too sophisticated (or too dishonest?), I suppose…
8. The Seeds: «Up in Her Room» (radio edit) A song to celebrate uncomplicated pleasure, as if Christianity never happened. Original flower punks the Seeds' until recently available 1966 album, Web of Sound, closes with an ode to a free love sister, a quarter of an hour-long, entitled «Up in Her Room». This is the short and sweet two-minute radio edit, from the flipside of single «Mr. Farmer». I still recommend the epic full length album version, though. Two minutes wouldn't satisfy a sexually generous original punk hippie chick up in her love nest—not by far.
9. 49th Parallel: «Laborer» If not one of those boringly polemic, Socialist punk songs, this is an amusingly caustic look at Capitalism. That you can dance to.
10. Sumpin' Else: «Baby You're Wrong» Another turning-against-one's-love-interest track. One can imagine the singer putting into this song all the things he never dares tell her:
Baby, you tell me that I can't dance (But you're wrong) You say that I move like there's sand in my pants (But you're wrong) 'Cause I can do the Duck and the Temptation walk In fact, I taught you how to do the Dog! (So you're wrong)
Also, note the gloriously fuzzy bass lining the song like a static-electric carpet underneath your feet. This was before the Rolling Stones ushered in the unfortunate rock'n'roll precedence of burying the bass way down in the mix. Bill Wyman's doormat ways and subservience to the Glimmer Twins is directly responsible for the tyranny of guitar wankery and cock rock!
11. The Split Ends: «Rich with Nothin'» Like Paul Revere & the Raiders, only nastier! No sweet harmonies here, the band just yelling in the background. Also, whatever happened to rock's signature scream introducing the guitar solos? I know, I know… Feminism and Grunge made the guitar solo politically incorrect. But the least you scuzzy indie rockers can do is wail and howl a little…
12. Terry Knight & the Pack: «Numbers» Another mean'n'nasty riff backed by stomping drums, with acerbic (if slightly nonsensical) lyrics that could've come out of Bob Dylan's mordant mouth in 1966, had he been slightly more coherent:
You've got 13 years of learnin' At the finest schools They gave you 26 teachers and you made them all Look like fools You told 11 good men that you loved them But you know you lied 'Cause all you ever do is Lay around your house and cry
13. The Todds: «I Want Her Back» The singer, drummer and guitarist—even the organ player—are all competing here. Even the lyricist and the guy who wrote the melody must have been competing with each other on this one! The result is rocking. (Creative tension, people!) And I suspect the pogo was invented whilst trying to dance in time to the drummer and organ player on this frantic number.
14. The Bougalieu: «Let's Do Wrong» «The way you look at me / A man can plainly see / Your eyes are full of lies»! There's that bitterness and disdain again—something civilised and healthy individuals aren't supposed to feel, but which they're allowed in songs such as this, so liberating. Also, the title alone is worth the price of admission. The guitar player sounds delightfully impatient, and the avant garde break sounds like US Maple, thirty years earlier. And surely this singer must be one of the coolest human beings to ever have walked this mucky space rock? He sounds like the kind of guy who could wear sunglasses after dark and get away with it.
15. Don & Jerry w/the Fugitives: «In the Cover of Night» «All the things I need / Are waiting, yes indeed / In the cover of night»!
17. Boo Boo & Bunky: «This Old Town» «Boo Boo & Bunky»?! Kudos for the name alone. But the song is actually good. Driving, pounding, stomping drums, simple and primal and made for the dance floor.
18. The Belfast Gipsies: «Gloria's Dream» Scruffy Murphy rock here, no doubt trying to cash in on Them's monster ode to teenage lust, «Gloria». The party the singer's on about is one party I'd love to attend…
19. The Teddy Boys: «Where Have All the Good Times Gone» An American cover of the Kinks' original, this performance is indicative of the difference between the more pastoral and restrained British mod/freakbeat scene and its sexier, more unhinged cousin across the pond. This rendition wins, hands down.
20. The Hardtimes: «Fortune Teller» The Rolling Stones did a decent version of this funny, little ditty, lyrics like a joke, complete with set-up and punchline. But this version is just as good, if not better. Uncomplicated rock'n'roll run-through.
21. Vinnie Basile: «Girl» Stupid lyrics, inept musicianship, just what the doctor ordered. Proof that obvious rhymes, out-of-tune strumming and hack drumming can create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
22. The Sting-Rays Of Newburgh: «Fool» Nasty riff, psychedelic organ, echoing harmonies… Can't you just hear the black/strobe lights and the swirling oil projections on the wall? Another party, part debauchery, part existentialism, that I'd love to attend, most psychedelically.
23. The Bluebeards: «Come on-a My House» The Bluebeards are pushing it, kitsch-wise, with the oriental flavourings in the melody and percussion, but the way they emphasise «candy» when they harmonise, «Come on-a my house, my house / I'm gonna give you caaandy» sounds gleefully wrong and creepy. Wonder if one of these guys is a Catholic priest now?
25. The Wolf Men: «Watusi Beat» Sounds like they stole the 13th Floor Elevators' «You're Gonna Miss Me», but with a scuzzy sounding guitar solo like that, who cares?
26. The Troyes: «Rainbow Chaser» «One day you'll wake and realize / That the love that's in her eyes / Was only a disguise…» Banal lyrics made to sound profound; hypnotic vocal melody, groovy rhythm, great garage-psych. Yeh!
27. The Evil: «Whatcha Gonna Do about It?» One of those staple garage covers. With the way they drawl, ever-so-suggestively, «whatcha gonna doooh about it?», my money's on the Evil's version…
28. The Myddle Class: «Don't Let Me Sleep too Long» Pure ecstasy and affirmation of life. We can all sleep when we're dead, so don't let me sleep too long. Dance, Daddy!
29. Corporate Image: «Not Fade Away» The Rolling Stones' rendition seems to be considered the definitive version of «Not Fade Away», but this relentlessly urgent, driving stomper by the Corporate Image (what a great moniker!) pisses all over it:
How could the Corporate Image's version have ended up such an obscure recording?! Another of Dan's remarkable finds.
For much more of the same, go check out Dan's curation of rock heritage and socio-cultural history over at his virtual garage. Also, Garage Dan has a band, Dan Frank & the True Believers. I don't know whether Dan is the Dan who's the eponymous man in the band, but there you go.
THIS BLOG IS DEFUNCT. Absolutely all uploads have been summarily deleted by MediaFire. Re-ups may be done on request, but no promises. For music of similar kinds as championed by Toilet Guppies, we endorse Bathwater Radiowaves.
Posts
