THIS BIKE IS A PIPEBOMB - "Songs of Our Soil" - Tape - 2000

    As I have said before, I am not really a big fan of THIS BIKE IS A PIPEBOMB, but I respect them as artists, musicians and as some of the best people that I have had the privilege of meeting in my life. In 2000, TBIAPB, set out on a tour of the southeastern U.S. playing solely folk and union songs. They didn't play any original songs. They had a fancy camera with which their friends Todd and Tate recorded a lot of their performances. It was rumored that they were supposed to be getting a grant to produce this material for a program about the new wave of folk and punk that was to be aired on PBS. Well, that last part never actually happened. What actually did happen is that TBIAPB sent out these recordings ahead of their tour (along with a songbook that told you the note and words to these songs [and more] and encouraged punks to learn the songs on different instruments and play at the show with their band. I set up a show for them under a bridge by the Tennessee River and it was pretty great, but no one joined them to play along.
   Some of these songs sound great in their transition to TBIAPB's take on punk, such as "John Henry". Others are cringe-worthy, like "Eat a Block Of Tofu" set to the tune of LEADBELLY'S "Pick a Bale of Cotton". Anyway, don't listen to my jaded ass talk about it. Listen for yourself.
                    Embrace the Tape Hiss
   Out of all the times I have accompanied TBIAPB in their tour van, I never asked them what happened to all of that live footage from this tour. I'll find out.

YOUR HEART BREAKS - "Tales From the Gimli Hospital" - Tape - 2003?

   Clyde Peterson is the principal songwriter behind the moniker of YOUR HEART BREAKS and he has been consistently writing solid broken hearted pop songs for the better part of 10 years (maybe more). He has roped various people into his fold over the years to provide the backing music to his songs, including Kimya Dawson, Karl Blau, members of EARTH, Mirah and even yours truly. On this early tape, Clyde plays multiple stringed instruments, mostly unaccompanied by nothing more than his voice. It's one of my favorite recordings he has put out, even though it is hard to pick a favorite. All of his music is great.
  Even though San Francisco (where I live) doesn't really have the season of Fall, this still feels like the perfect time to be listening to this. Picture this scenario, if you will: You've just been dumped. After getting wasted, blasting all the hardcore records you have, breaking some bottles against walls, feeling like a waste of flesh and losing every last bit of faith in humanity, put this tape on your headphones, put on a big coat and walk down some railroad tracks in the freshly fallen snow. If you don't have railroad tracks in your town, just walk down every alley. If you don't have either of those things, move to a new town and listen to this tape when you get there.
  You can also picture this scenario: It's the day after Halloween and you just partied all night and played in a cover band. Then, you have to wake up at 7:30 am and go to work, still drunk, for 8 hours. When you get home, this is the only thing you want to listen to.
  Another scenario is that you just like pop music made by queer people. Simple.

        Clyde and his doom cloak on the Puget Sound.

                     Download YOUR HEART BREAKS
                      YOUR HEART BREAKS Website

XEROXICA - a 13 Band Comp - Tape - 1994

   This compilation was put out by the ever-stellar Secret Center Records out of Sacramento, CA. In the 90's, they specialized in putting out one-off cassingles by local bands that stayed together for at least 45 minutes. This compilation showcases some of Sacto's finest (?) bands and, inexplicably, looks outside of their insular scene at bands from other states....but only like, one or two of them. Appearances are made by the always entertaining BANANAS, NAR (who deliver my favorite line of theirs "Why is that picture of me taped back together?"), CAPTAIN 9's AND THE KNICKERBOCKER TRIO, LOS HUEVOS and more. If you're into any of the aforementioned bands or just have any interest in the pure nerdiness of the 90's Sacto scene, I'm sure you are already downloading this.
  I ordered this tape from Secret Center at some point in the 90's and it took them a full 3 YEARS to send it to me! I called them a few times and even sent my new address every time I moved. I thought I would never actually get it. Three bucks down the drain. Then, one day it finally showed up with an apology letter and I've been loving it ever since.

                               Download XEROXICA

VENOM - Stage Banter - 1986

   Okay, so this has been passed around all over the world since before the internet ever existed...Thurston Moore even put this out as a single on his Ecstatic Peace label back at the beginning of the 90's....but I like this alot and I like you a lot and I want you to have this. Plus, it's almost Halloween and this recording seems fitting.
   The world was weird back during the 80's. To prove that, the universe put VENOM and BLACK FLAG on the same bill in New Jersey. When VENOM was doing their thing, BLACK FLAG'S roadie, Joe Cole decided to document it on his tape recorder. Later, I'm guessing that he realized that Cronos' stage banter was the real gem here and Mr. Cole cut out all of their music from the set. The end result is hilarious, memorable and highly fucking quotable. Happy Halloween!
   YOU WANNA HEAR SOMETHING REALLY HEAVY??!!

565 BURNOUTS - Demo - Tape - 1995

   565 BURNOUTS were a band of 4 people who seemed to live, breathe, eat and play only 70's and 80's punk. Even though the rest of us were firmly entrenched in the mid-90's and all the pop-punk catastrophes that came with it, 565 BURNOUTS were still proudly wearing ripped up MDC shirts and wearing out their DILS records from repeated listening. Their singer Penny, seemed to loathe being in front of people and would scream her shrill lyrics and stare at the floor while the rest of the band went so buck-wild that they would unplug themselves and not even realize it. I lived with their guitarist/bass player/singer Jason and he was a spitting image of Darby Crash, right down to the engineer boots, shitty homemade tattoos, chipped teeth and big chain around his neck. He used to sit around the house stabbing safety pins into his arm while smoking cigarettes and blasting BLACK FLAG. Punk!
   I'm surprised that the quality of this tape is still holding up as well as it is because I have listened to this thing countless times. Songs like "Coffee Shop" and "Spin Around" have been firmly implanted in my head since the mid-90's. "What the Fuck" was definitely just a vehicle for showing off Jason's Greg Ginn-like guitar hooks, but it's still a great song. At the time of this recording, their drummer Ben, was the punkest person I knew and I was actually kinda scared of him until I joined a band with him and discovered that he is one of the sweetest motherfuckers you could ever meet..
   Not long after this tape was recorded, Penny quit and Ben moved to Hawaii. The band kept going for a short time and I played drums for them for a little while. At one of the last shows, I set my drums on fire and Jason set himself on fire and dove head-first into a bunch of gravel. It sucked. It was time to break up...and they did.
  I tried to find some pictures of 565 BURNOUTS, but I don't have any. Instead, here is the Google Street View of the house where they recorded this tape...it looked a lot more punk then.

DOWNLOAD

Link updated Dec 2016

                       
 By the way, it's pronounced "Five sixty five" not "five hundred and sixty five". 565 is the interstate that runs through North Huntsville, AL.

WAVY GRAVY - "For Adult Enthusiasts" - Compilation LP - 1960's

   This album (along with John Waters, THE CRAMPS and late night cable access exploitation movies) is responsible for warping my young brain and making me want to be a freak for life. I think I first heard this thing when I was about 12 years old and I felt like I was receiving a transmission from an alien world. These 14 songs are divided between exploitation movie trailers, creepy-as-fuck spoken word bits and weird religious rants. The songs range from weirdo-psychotic country-western to dumb 60's garage songs about gorillas. The highlights for me are PORTER WAGGONER's demented "Rubber Room", WENDELL AUSTIN's ode to psychedelics in "LSD" and the fucking ridiculous stupidity of THE LONE TWISTER. This compilation makes more sense when you listen to it as a whole.
    Also, it's pretty fucked up.

   ...and it has nothing to do with that weird hippie clown named Wavy Gravy.

                                    Download

TOTALLY CHAOS - Tape - 2004

    It turns out that I don't really know that much about TOTALLY CHAOS besides these few things: 1. They were from Minneapolis. 2. This tape is their only release. 3. They rule. 4. If you don't like "17th Beer", "Stitches" and "Wild Outside", you might not be into punk.
   Really, that's about it. If you know more info than that, please comment and tell me more.
  This band features members of FROZEN TEENS, HIDDEN SPOTS and many more.

                        

DOWNLOAD

Updated 3/2020

HIDDEN RESENTMENTS - "Hats Off to Miss 125th Street" - Tape - 1996

    The HIDDEN RESENTMENTS always remind me of a time of copy keys, tone dialers, paper food stamps, pay phones and generator shows in the Everglades of Miami. They were around for a short time in the mid-90's and lived in squatted, sinking boats in the Miami bay. They seemed to live solely on a diet of stolen beer, ramen noodles, thieved salad bar items and any food that was taken out of the trash. Their songs were all heartbroken and desperate; like the whole world is gonna end because your partner left you...the kind of music that many people only feel comfortable writing in their early 20's. Somehow though, their theme song is perfect and timeless.
   Recess Records put this out on a 7" four years after they broke up, but did such a shoddy job on it that I think it's not even worth picking up out of a free box. They left the best song off the record, even though it's listed as being on there. If I tell you any more details, it will just delve into shit talk...and we don't shit talk here on the internet.
    Their drummer, Scott lives just across the bay from me and plays in a band that I do not know the name of. The bass player, Cinque, is one of my best friends and now plays in STREET LEGAL. No one really knows what happened to their singer/guitarist Iggy Scam. Some say that he was last seen running out of a store carrying a case of stolen beer and a crowbar while shouting something about Fidel Castro and a lack of pay phones. Others contend that he is squatting an inhabited 60 bedroom mansion on South Miami Beach in a room that no one ever uses while he writes a million page manifesto on conquering the world one scam at a time. Still others have told me that he stopped drinking, changed his name to Erick Lyle, plays in a soft rock band called BLACK RAINBOW, and writes books now. That can't be true though, can it?

 Download HIDDEN RESENTMENTS and wish paper food stamps still existed

re-uploaded Feb 2016

                        

STRAIGHT YOUTH - "Together We Can Do It" - 7" - 1990

    STRAIGHT YOUTH was a brilliant band. It was comprised of members of a defunct straight-edge hardcore band and they played fake straight-edge better than most of their sXe peers. After the demise of POWERHOUSE (a real South Florida sXe band), Ross Youth (Andrew Powell R.I.P.) broke edge and formed this ridiculous recording project with some other winners who went on to be in bands like CHICKENHEAD, LOS CANADIANS and KREAMY 'LECTRIC SANTA. Apparently, it pissed off members of the sXe community who could not take a joke...or maybe they realized that STRAIGHT YOUTH was better than their stupid band. The song "X on my Hand" is more classic and essential  to me than anything by MINOR THREAT, BOLD and YOUTH OF TODAY combined.
                             TAKE IT LARRY!!!

NO - Demo - 2005

   Fast, manic hardcore from Athens, GA. I didn't pay a lot of attention to this band when they were around, even though I lived in the same town as them, but I've been finding myself listening to this tape and their LP (which has some of the worst cover art ever. "Not my fault" says drummer, Jason) a whole lot in the last week. It's loud, it's fast. There are eight songs on here with no song titles and it's all over in less than 10 minutes. The first song has my favorite recorded "dive bomb" within the first 10 seconds.
                       Just go ahead and download it

                     NO at Tight Pockets in 2005