Goddamn. Has it been that long since we had new Ultimate Fakebook tunes? Download this, post-haste. I’ve had to wait through a morning of work and lunch with Thing 2 to get this, and it can’t download fast enough.
Pretty much stolen wholesale from a thread on the Pop Punk Message Bored, here are scads of free albums available for download.
* Every single Hickey, Fuckboyz, Yogurt, etc. recording ever made featuring Matty Luv is available here. It’s a lot of punk rock. I hope you don’t have a bandwidth cap.
* All of Defiance, Ohio’s records are available on their discography page. You get the option of using BitTorrent, or getting them via links to Archive.org, where you can download their amazingly catchy folk punk in mp3 or ogg vorbis.
* Andrew Jackson Jihad might not have their “official” albums available, but you can get the duo’s demos on their discography page. They’re rather similar to Defiance, Ohio, but they’re less crazy. More akin to straight folk, less “huge group.”
I’ll be back to “real” posts tomorrow. Today’s a fucking bear.
Thorns of Life, the band that features former Jawbreaker / Jets to Brazil frontman Blake Schwarzenbach and Aaron Cometbus (of Crimpshine and Cometbus ‘zine) has been pretty much the hippest thing to hit the webs in ages. Every time they play a show, it gets YouTube’d and Flickr’d to death. And, I’m pretty sure most people are going to bootleg the hell out of their full-length when it comes out on DeSoto later this year, and then post all sorts of snide comments about how it’s not that good (or, alternately, post how amazing it is and how great it is to have “one of the greatest songwriters of his generation” back among us writing tunes).
While we’re waiting for their next live show and for the album to drop, we can take a listen to their set at 924 Gilman back at the end of January. It’s recorded by Avi from Silver Sprocket who did this awesome interview with Blake.
Thorns of Life Live at 924 Gilman 1/31/09. (Mediafire link)
Photo courtesy Dave Sanders
Every year, I make a comp CD to hand out to friends and family. It started back in the winter of ‘97, because I was a poor college student living in the dorms of KU. I designed a cover on my computer and recorded off a couple dozen comp tapes for my friends. From there, it moved to CDs. The first couple were just random compilations of songs I thought would appeal to everyone, and from there, it mutated into cover song comps, songs with “whoa-oh,” an actual Christmas song compilation, a ska comp, an instrumental comp, and lord knows what else.
Well, this past year, I decided to put way more effort into the comp, and made a rule: nothing that I didn’t a physical copy of on vinyl. The whole thign was ripped from records down here in the laboratory that is RSJ headquarters (aka my basement). Here, for the first time, it’s getting shared outside my little circle of friends. This is going to be a regular thing here. The first Monday of every month, there will be a fresh comp to download. All-vinyl, nothing pulled from my mp3 collection or CDs. If I don’t own it on record, you won’t find it here. It’ll mean I actually have to work at this, and put some thought into it. You’ll get quality over quantity, essentially.
So, here’s your first treat. Originally given to friends and family as The Holiday Tiki Lounge, I have renamed it as the Rock Star Journalist All-Vinyl Lounge Party. Some tracks can be tracked down on Sin Alley comps and stuff like that, but I’d like to think this is a pretty unique offering. Equally suitable for a night in sipping cocktails or getting bombed on cheap beer on a porch, I hope you enjoy.
Tracklisting:
1. Lenny Dee - Rock Me Back to Little Rock
2. Cozy Cole - Topsy Part II
3. the Periscopes - Beaver Shot
4. Billy Vaughn - C’est Ci Bon
5. Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood - Oh Lonesome Me
6. Charlie Feathers - Cockroach
7. Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Blow Ye the Trumpet In Zion
8. Sean Mencher - Jumpin’ Track
9. the Frantics - Werewolf
10. Fred Blassie - Blassie, King of Men
11. the Marketts - Out of Limits
12. Xterminators - Wild Hare
13. the Motivations - The Birds
14. Freddie & Hitch Hikers - Sinners
15. Mr. Marcos’ V7 - Shanty
16. Johnny Clark & the Four Playboys - Jungle Stomp
17. Ferrante & Teicher - Brazil
18. Possum - The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati
19. Ganim’s Asia Minors - Daddy Lolo
20. Joe Bravo - Please Call Me Baby
21. Rix Ortolani - The Festival of the Bull-La Forcata
22. the Yards - Munchimoo Boogaloo (Tiki Torcher Mix)
23. Lani Laurens - Silver Sand
24. Tegu Ni Lagere Group - Kini Varita Yara Mai
25. the Bill Lucidarme Group - Kauai Surf (Torch Lighting Ceremony)
Download the Rock Star Journalist All-Vinyl Lounge Party (RS link)
Over at Fuck the Mummies, there’s a great compilation assembled by the guy who runs the site. He compiled a list of the ultimate garage punk songs, put ‘em together as a comp, and it’s available for download via RS. The link’s in this post.
The list and comp are part of RateYourMusic’s Ultimate Box Set, which is “a 500 cd fanmade true history of music, covering every genre from every era, with contributions of each disk by users with the necessary expertise and understanding for each respective genres. 500 discs is just a target for the amount of discs on the “completed” project and may total more or less.” It’s pretty swank, and if you’re in the need for a compilation starting point, the lists provided are exhaustive. Most (if not all) are pretty subjective, but thorough.
The fact that he included songs from both the Spread Eagles and Fag Cop (bands local to here in Lawrence) speaks pretty highly of the bands included. The reliance on Goner-related bands and leans a little towards the past five or six years is a little frustrating (no Gas Huffer?), but it’s still a strong comp, and far better than the usual indulgent tripe you find online.
Fag Cop - “I’m Fucking Dead” (from I’m Fucking Dead)
Gas Huffer - “You Are Not Your Job” (from The Inhuman Ordeal Of Special Agent Gas Huffer)
Bomb the Music Industry! - “Scrambles”
(Quote Unquote Records)
As many times as I’ve written of Bomb the Music Industry! in the past, you’d think I’d've run out of things to say by this point. Nope! They just released their newest album, Scrambles, and it’s pretty goddamn great. It’s way more varied than their past few records, and those were pretty much everything but the kitchen sink.
Scrambles has a couple slower, acoustic numbers, which I certainly think will lend themselves pretty well to Mr. Rosenstock’s travels around the world with a guitar and iPod. The fast, crazy songs - of which there are the usual amount - are a little more focused, and have less dramatic tonal shifts than, say, To Leave Or Die On Long Island. The lyricism is less general, and more incitefully focused on topics like scene elitism (by both bands and fans) in songs like “Gang of Four Meets the Stooges (but Boring)” and “(Shut) Up The Punx!!!”
Even songs like “Can I Pay My Rent in Fun?” and “Saddr Weirdr” put forth the notion that music, while liberating, can be absolutely stifling to one’s life in general. The idea of spending your life seeing the country and playing music sounds like it’d be the greatest adventure ever, until you think about it and realise that you’re seeing the country through the windows of a van and a haze of cigarette smoke from onstage.
“Fresh Attitude, Young Body” and “25!” turn all of Scrambles into a sort of meditation as to what it’s like to get older, play music, and be poor. “Cold Chillin’ Cold Chillin’” and “Sort of Like Being Pumped” provide the bookends to the album, that along with the aforementioned songs about aging, give the album a certain sense of hope, that there are “messages that say that life’s better than this.”
The story of the whole recording story over at the discography page is amazing, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the copy from Asian Man that is, in Mike Park’s words, “an insane visual project as the CD, and comes with a 32 page zine with random brilliance and other ramblings from Jeff and friends, a sticker decoder for the cover, digipak and yup… to date, the most expensive CD we’ve put out.” Wow. In the meantime, download it for free (or a donation of your choice) below.
Download Scrambles here or, if you just want a taste, “Gang of Four Meets the Stooges (but Boring).”
Long, long ago, when this blog was updated more regularly (which, as you’ll notice, is happening again), I expressed my enjoyment of Banner Pilot’s debut EP, Pass the Poison. It was a great little debut, and I loved listening to that CD. They’ve since come quite far, with their album Resignation Day making a couple best-of lists over at Punknews this past year, as well as mine.
Well, several moves later, I don’t have my copy of Pass the Poison anymore. Nor can you buy. On the bright side, they’ve got it hosted over at If You Make It. You can also find a bunch of stuff from Dead Broke Rekerds. I’d highly recommend grabbing the Shang-A-Lang / Jonesin’ split. It’s damn good dirty garage.
Download Pass the Poison.
Once again, I apologize for the repeated coverage of certain subjects. I’m a little rusty on coverage right now, and I’m going to the well that’s easiest to draw from.
Free samplers are the name of the game today.
Quote Unquote Records has posted their 2009 sampler. It’s got stuff from upcoming releases: Bomb the Music Industry’s Scrambles, Let Me Crazy’s Virgin Metal, O Pioneers!!!’s Neon Creeps, as well as stuff from Laura Stevenson and Shinobu. They were doing this whole “pay what you want” thing way before Radiohead and Trent Reznor, so support them and their awesome releases so they keep their website running and have all this stuff available.
Download the 2009 Quote Unquote Records sampler.
Suburban Home Records has also posted a sampler of their stuff. It’s called “2008 was a great year, 2009 will be better” and just smokes. Stuff from pretty much everything they released in ‘08, as well as sneak peaks at some of their forthcoming releases for this year. Tim Barry (who’s playing Lawrence in March!), the Takers, Joey Cape, and 27 other artists. They actually do this for a living, so help Virgil and the crew out. The longer they keep going, the longer we’ll keep hearing the great music they put out. This is to say nothing of the crack-like addictive nature of Vinyl Collective, who I’m sure I’ve plugged far too many times here.
Download “2008 was a great year, 2009 will be better”.”
I am totally aware this cd came out a while back (like well over two years ago). However, No Idea sent it to the station recently, and I reviewed it for our library, and it’s totally great, and you should go listen to it right now.
Defiance, Ohio – “The Great Depression”
(No Idea Records)
Defiance, Ohio sing politically charged songs that features a bunch of kids on penny whistle, banjo, and other such folksy instrumentation. It’s folk-punk, for whatever that’s worth. Like fellow genre-benders O Pioneers!, Fake Problems, This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb and Andrew Jackson Jihad, this sextet sings lyrics that sound like they were written by Billy Bragg, and strum and thump as if they were the opening act for the Pogues.
There’s a lot of energy here, and the songs barely make it past three minutes (if they make it past two). Short song lengths are pretty handy here, actually – when mocking Bush (“New World Order”) and the government (“Lambs to the Slaughter”), the rhetoric is easier to take when it’s fast and catchy. “Oh, Susquehanna!” is my absolute favorite, and I want to make every kid who ever tramped by a creek or climbed a tree or rode their bike off a cliff listen to it so they can remember when kids had fun outside and got dirty and didn’t act like they were made of fragile crystal.
You can download The Great Depression fo’ free over at archive dot org.
Kansas City’s Sister Mary Rotten Crotch was one of my favorite bands back in my El Torreon days. Hell, Alison, their primary songwriter and guitarist, bought me my first legal drink - McCormick whiskey, if I remember right. There was a show I saw them play at Gee Coffee in Olathe that featured them, Kosher, Tanka Ray, and Terminus City from Atlanta. It currently ranks up there as one of the best punk shows I’ve ever seen, national or local.
It was the first time I saw either Kosher or Tanka Ray, and both bands became immediate favorites. Terminus City I had heard of, because they’d been talked up by Brian Bomb numerous times when I’d talked with him regarding what shows were worth seeing at El Torreon. The SMRC ladies ponied up the dough to fly Frank and co. in from Atlanta to play the Gee show, and it was worth every penny. Every band was firing on all cylinders, and Terminus City ended up being one of those bands that I saw once and lamented not ever seeing again.
Happily, SMRC and Terminus City teamed up to record a split for Hooligan Empire, Brian Bomb’s label. It was pretty limited, and three of the songs never saw the light on any other record. Both Terminus City tracks are exclusive to this split, as is Sister Mary’s “Holier Than Thou” (”Fuck You…” ended up on their Fuckload o’ Pretty LP on Moo Cow Records). Terminus City would go on to record another split with another Kansas City band when they put out a split with the Main Street Saints the following year on Flat Records out of Boston (notable for being a TKO subisdiary started by the Dropkick Murphys‘ Ken Casey). Terminus City also has a readily available full-length on TKO, entitled Justice Isn’t Always Fair.
Anyhow, this is a fine slab o’ clear blue wax that you probably can’t track down anywhere. The debut from Sister Mary Rotten Crotch, Hell Hath No Fury, was pressed on clear red wax, and that seven-song live set currently sits on eBay for twenty bucks. I do not even want to guess as to what this happy bit o’ tuneage would run for. Punk rock as all-hell, with a lovely bit of contrast between the female vocals of Sister Mary and the gruffness of Terminus City.
Terminus City / Sister Mary Rotten Crotch - Skirts ‘n’ Skins
01. Terminus City - “Morris County”
02. Terminus City - “Never Make Me Fall”
03. Sister Mary Rotten Crotch - “Fuck You and Your Neighborhood”
04. Sister Mary Rotten Crotch - “Holier Than Thou“