This was first posted on August 10th, 2008 on the normal "American Rager" blog page.
Reviews of what I deem "Underground Classics". The idea for this came about while digging through boxes and boxes of old tapes and CD's. All of these are underground music. I consider all of these either extreme music or outsider music. All of these are form the Northeast region of the U.S. I consider all of them genuine and original. I'm thinking about bootlegging some but not all. If you ask, I'll make a copy of anything except Squidlaunch or Landed. Good luck getting through it all.
In no particular order:
1 - DAWN CULBERTSON - "The Return of the Evil Pappy Twin"
Dawn Culbertson (1951-2004). Dawn is probably one of the truest outsider musicians that I have ever met. This CD is 10 cover songs that are played on the lute and sung in a monotone voice. The whole CD has a pretty somber feel. The lyrics really take on a new meaning coming from Dawn. She speaks herself through these others' lyrics, spotlighting different themes by accentuating different lines. Certain lines that don't stand out on the originals stand out on her versions. I don't know what her true feelings actually were, but this CD certainly portrayed in how and what she sang and what songs she chose to cover. I don't know about the originals but these songs are about wanting something that you don't have and wanting to be something/someone else, songs about "going without" or being on the outside of things, socially.
But if you didn't know her while she was alive, you might not care about who she was. On that hand, these are pretty interesting stripped-down punk and heavy metal covers. Bare & revealing.
2 - THE FOURX - CS
The Fourx were Ben Jones, Keith Waters & 2 other people. I got this tape in 2001 while on tour. I played a show with them at the Berwick Institute in Boston, Mass. They were 2 drummers and 2 guitarists, maximum riffage out of smallish amps and full-on dread-drum-head banging. The live performance sounded very lo-fi. The small amp, low-end guitar that I saw live came across as much more Led Zeppelin inspired and classic rock nostaligic on the cassette. Again, very warm and riffy with the right amount of hi-end.
The tape was recorded in stereo, one guitarist and one drummer in each speaker, almost completely panned. The funny & great thing about this tape is that it sounds like each duo, either the left-speaker duo or the right-speaker duo, are playing their own song, completely separate from one another. The separate songs/duos meet in your ears and make a very complex and dynamic music. What came across as rock chaos live, came across as very well written, heavy rock songs on the tape. The two duo's battle and weave themselves together in your ears. Right after I heard this I bootlegged about 20 copies.
3 - KITES - untitled first cassette BR05
"There's a chimney fucking the sky, there's smoke ejaculating out of the top." Very simple & innocent. I know he recorded this onto a 4-track, probably in his bedroom or a closet. Now that I think of it, he might've mentioned that it was in a kitchen. Whatever, it sounds like a closet. I know it was a 4-track because while handing this to me he said that he had just received the 4-track for Christmas from his Mother. Most of the songs are lead by a bass or an acoustic guitar. The guitar or bass usually sounds quiet and folky yet pretty jagged. There's a lot of singing with heavily effected vocals, sometimes sped up. There's a lot of lyrics, like the ones mentioned above. Ambient music bridges the songs together, sometimes becoming their own songs. They are sometimes on the heavy, scratchy, noisy, 4-track feedback side, sometimes a bit more lightly & droning. The noisier parts have a casio, digital keyboard to analog tape kind of sound. It's really a sweet fucking listen. The kind of tape that you flip over and over. Recorded onto a 4-track, released on tape. There's a lot of pop sensibilities on this, buried and improved upon. Great hooks.
Before this tape I only knew Chris as the wild singer of "And That's All She Wrote" from when they played a few times with my band, "Assfagut". I think but I am not positive that I traded my first solo tape for this tape, his first solo tape. It's a small, coincidental/parallel world.
4 - SQUIDLAUNCH - "A Cesspool of Ugliness" - 7"
Western Massachusetts free jazz rock band formed in 1992. Man is the Bastard plus freak-out. Slow drums with the bass in front, leading the way and forming slow semi-stoner grooves. Out of nowhere, all of a sudden bursts of blast-type beats. Simple one-string guitar lines. Thrashy, screamed, harsh, slobbery vocals. Bass, guitar & drums, everyone on the floor. The first side has a perfect punk quality. It is very full. At the end of side one there is a lock-groove with someone saying, "pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty" over and over and over again, until time ends. Side two has a little bit of a lower sound quality. I think it may have to do with side one being at 45 rpm's and side two being at 33 rpm's. The vocals sound WAY better on side one, they are at one with the music. All in all, the quality is perfect for a 7" and for capturing their existence.
5 - M AX NOI MACH/NOISE NOMADS - 9-volt split cassette
I know this is my own release - but what the fuck ever. No one else reviews my music, especially no other American (one European does, no Africans). I feel like I should include this review because it is intensely, presently influencing and inspiring me. All the music was made by instruments exclusively powered by 9-volt batteries. This was supposed to be a compilation on Bonescraper Recordings but we were the only 2 that actually recorded 9-volt music.
I recorded my side onto a Fostex R-8 8-track 1/4" reel to reel. I used 2 home-made tone-generators and walkie-talkies for vocals & feedback. The quality and warmth of the found is so FUCKING amazing. I listened to this recently and then went out, searched, found and re-bought the same 8-track again. It made me re-care about what I was recording onto and what kind of sound I was getting recorded. Not just about the written parts and content that was being played. The songs are pretty grimey & rhythmic. Machine music, 9 volts beefed up by sweet analog recording quality.
The Noise Nomads side is sickeningly harsh. If I remember correctly, at this time he was playing with a mic running through 2 distortion pedals. Both distortion pedals were only powered by 9-volts. Unearthly yelling and growling, he'd improvise for about 10 minutes. It's a simple set-up but extremely effective. Really raw, a man standing in the middle of the room growling until his face turns red with points of release where he'd yell and his face would turn white (regular) for a second. A mic in his mouth, his pedals in one hand and his amp in the other. About 30 copies of this were made. I think 10 of those people actually listened to it.
6 -DARREN FINIZIO - "Adventures in Fragmentation Vol. 2+3"
Darren handed me this tape in 2003. He said, "you'd like this, its from 1996 and this one guy put it out but I don't think he every really got it around... I've never seen one." He was asking me to re-put-it-out. I listened to it non-stop, making all the right plans to release it - buying tapes, dubbing them and brainstorming on ideas for the cover. Like time, the idea faded away and got buried underneath projects and/or dust. The next thing I know is that it's 2007 and I'm sitting in my room going through a box of tapes. I came across this and put it on. I didn't shut it off for about 2 weeks, memorizing every word. The title is "Adventures in Fragmentation" and that is exactly what this is. It was recorded onto a 4-track in a bedroom at his parents house. A lot of this is people talking on the radio. He cut up their conversations to make them say what he wanted them to say & then threw in his own, very dark, comments mixed between, subliminally.
"It's the stuff we're made of that creates mass-murderers, unfortunately, I am not one" It goes from that kind of sound collage to him having conversations with himself as two separate personalities, each with a different voice. After some of that, there is an instrumental synthesizer song. More of the collage & then a psychadelic ultra-catchy pop song about being an outsider. All the transitions are very rapid, instantaneous. The birth of his later "identity" bands first appear on this tape: Hoppy the Frog, Dyke, Muscle Factor, Open Minded Men, etc. I still have a few copies of this left & I am planning to sometime in the near future, release volumes 4+5.
7 - SOREN - "The Pirates E.P."
The one thing that I don't like about this is the spoken vocals. Thank god they are sparse & only on one song. It makes this teeter a fine, weird line between early emo and weird free jazz. The cover-art looks like a painting that you would normally find hanging on a wall in a coffee shop. That, combined with the boss distortion not going into the red, falsely good analog sound, creates a pretty endearing effect. What makes this a nice release is remembering what they were like live. I saw them in a basement in Northampton in 1999, which is where I bought the tape. The drummer drummed on a junk-drum-set, full with kegs and random pieces of metal. The guitarist/singer wildly head-banged, his guitar feeding back hi-pitch-like and the sax player practiced a good dose of restraint. They seemed as if they were improvising but would then come together for tight written parts. The instrumental shit on this tap is what rules, the songs where the sax is the lead and carries solid melody lines. "Pirates 2" & "Pirates 1" are both highlights and examples of that. The first few songs on this tape are low-lights, but as soon as "Pirates 2" starts, it REALLY picks up. Side 1 ends with Pirates 2 and Side 2 starts with Pirates 1. A similiar sax line rides a bit smoother on #2 and then later, on #1 it destroys itself. "Ghosts", the last song, is also a highlight, slow-moving and haunting, good for actual "low-lights". If this tape wasn't recorded so perfectly it would sound a lot better. Push the tape into the red, duh. Dark pre-neo-hippy non-intellectual spazz writeen free-jazz. Pretty heavy, too.
8 - LANDED - "Everthing's Happening" - CD
Legendary Providence band. This CD rules. Sick puke non-sense vocals buried and part of the "musical texture". I'm sure that there are words and thoughts in there somewhere. Heavy psycho party-rock music, destroy the room, destroy everything and then light yourself on fire. Very groovy and VERY heavy. 7 tracks, untitled. Songs, semi-written. From start to finish this thing is un-stoppable. Just go buy this, it might actually be findable. I think this CD completely killed warehouse rock for every band that will every try to play it every again.
9 - USAISAMONSTER - "7" - CD-R
Colin & Tom rolled into Palmer, Mass to play a backyard show in a shed. Because of patrons' alcohol & weed consumption, the kid that lived in the house in front of the shed shut down the show. He shut down the show by pointing an amp out of the second story window and yelling into a mic, "everyone has to leave". He then road his bike around the yard yelling the same thing over and over and over again. I guess these were his concentrated efforts in the war on drugs. With the show shut down & myself responsible as the middle man, I found a back-up plan; another youth from Palmer's parents were out of town for the weekend. The whole show followed each other in a train over there. We cleared the living room.
Defecation played first in the kitchen, contact mics on a toy-piano running through effects pedals. After that, Usaisamonster played in the living room. Furniture pushed to the perimeter. At least six cabs formed a wall behind the drummer, 3 wide and 2 tall. Our amps faced theirs, the two drum-sets in the middle. They played one 10 minute long song that morphed from one riff, turned into complete destruction and then fell into another riff, perfectly. Extremely head-banger friendly. Very free but perfectly joined, only they knew what was coming next & when it was coming. That song is the first song on this CD-R. A lot of the songs on this later appeared on other recordings, re-recorded. But to me, there is nothing like this "tour version". Nothing as fucking raw & heavy. Head-bang, drive your pick-up truck drunk down dark dirt-roads and hop into a lake, naked after having some sick sex and cumming all over a hairy bush. This CD-R and era of USAISAMONSTER fucked rock music and made it psychic, not psychadelic and trippy or wasteful.