Sunday, April 27, 2014

IMMORTAL MICE MEN - 4 Songs - Tape - Year???


   Okay, are you ready to get a little weird with me? I was browsing through my stacks of tapes and came across this mix tape from 2001 made by my friend, Amy, which is comprised solely of under-appreciated Midwestern bands from years past. Included are timeless tracks by THE GIZMOS, DOW JONES AND THE INDUSTRIALS, PROBLEMATICS, THE JETSONS and many more classics that are all worth tracking down. Then, I remembered that there are four songs by a band called THE IMMORTAL MICE MEN. I vaguely recall Amy telling me about buying that band's LP at a yard sale (??) in the middle of nowhere in southern Indiana. She dubbed her four favorite songs from the LP onto my tape. The band played urgent, anxious, goofy, shambolic synth-y new wave with a drum machine. The band's only LP was self-released sometime in the late 70's/early 80's. I wasn't going to upload these songs because I was sure that the band's material was all over the internet and probably picked over by the Killed By Death crowd. Turns out that when I started looking around, I could barely find anything at all! I found a youtube video of the band's full LP, which was posted almost four years ago and only has 150 views (as of this writing). The record isn't listed anywhere on Discogs, but a later record by Alan Nelson (the man responsible for IMMORTAL MICE MEN) can be found here. Also, Alan Nelson's youtube page is a treasure trove of 70's/80's weirdness. So, yeah....that's where my search ended. There's not much more info out there that I could find.


   I love these four songs and found some other gems on the full record. I might just be more familiar with these songs, but I think they're the best ones out of all of them (although "Dancing is For Assholes" is great and not on this tape). The download starts out with "Tease and Flirt", which sounds so budget, so fucked, so goofy and so compelling that I can't believe it's not a KBD classic. All of the songs are in that same vein. They're heavily synth based and driving. Kinda new wavey, but still urgent and punk-sounding. I'm pretty sure it's all home recorded. It sounds paranoid and claustrophobic, but also doesn't take itself too seriously/ (side note: the last song on here is called "Useless Chatter", which I have been using as a tag on this blog since day one...meant as a nod towards this song.)
   I highly recommend downloading this one and putting it on at your next dumb party...or listening to it on headphones on the bus to make yourself feel even crazier than you already are. Oh, and if you have a copy of this LP sitting in your garage or attic, I will gladly take it off of your hands.


If you know any info about this record, feel free to talk about it in the comments. 
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1 comment:

  1. PMWAugust 2, 2014 at 2:44 AM

    Awesome to hear this record finally coming out of the shadows a bit. I've treasured the vinyl rip a friend game me for almost 14 years. I've never seen a copy of the record for sale, but I've met two people with a copy(both from Indiana, both now living in Texas). It's odd, but for years I also only had the first four tracks on a tape. A friend of mine brought a terrible quality misfits bootleg to listen to in my car. He left the thing and these were on the other side. This was 97 or so, back in high school. I've been in love with thus weird shit ever since.

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