Back in inaction

Today I did my first solo radio show with WMTS. Urusei Punk Rock!! got off to a rough start. I didn't get to bed until 5:30 last night, as I was working on my computer. I then had to be up at 9 for the show... that didn't happen by the way. I got there late, had forgotten my iPod with the show's play list already made out, so I ran the show using CDs and records. This is not a big deal, it just means your board is tighter than a band of sun dried raw hide around your neck. I was scatter brained, hungry and tired as hell, but I made it work. 

If you're wondering, I play pop-punk and hardcore on my show. I'll be recording it next week and will upload the recording in two parts. I'm gonna try and see if I can somehow record on my computer which will let you hear it all, uninterrupted. Doing a 2 hour show on CD-R means there's a gotta be something missing, and it get freaking expensive. 

Anyway, today is my birthday, so here's so stuff for you because I'm feeling magnanimous. This was one of the hidden gems I got 5 months ago when the station pitched out its library. Fucking morons... I was incredibly angry. so much great music was just thrown away. This is a CD from Books Lie, a Brooklyn band that stuck around for a couple years longer than most hardcore bands seem to do. They were still jamming out their brand 

of hardcore as late as 2004, and thus far I've not been able to find out

 much more since then. They were wanting to head over to Japan, but since they disbanded in 2005, I very much doubt that worked out for them.  

The music really reminds me of the stuff coming out of San Diego in the early 90's. Antioch Arrow and Heroin come to mind. This CD is the Hall of Fame of Fire EP and a bunch of old 7"s so you get a good bit on this one. That said, if you piece it together right you can hear the band's evolution. this is of course true with most discographies or collections, but this one isn't in order, so I figured I should state that. I don't know why I felt the need to state that, or justify it. Welcome to meta-blogging? Anyway, the chronological order is as follows-

9, 11-14, 16(I Felt Like Such a Loser Until I Realized I am Already a Winner); 15(Split with Living Under Lies); 17-18(Empathy 7"); 1-8--  and no info on what track 10 is... must be one of those B-sides I hear so much about these days There's a weird electro track that is better off ignored. I'm guessing they are there to punctuate the sections of this collection as the end of the titular EP is also one of these oddities. 

This is on Level Plane. I really dig their roster. If labels like Dischord and Gravity captured scenes at a special place and time, level plane seems to be a who's who of the last 10 years of this music, what ever you want to call it. 

I'm not including art work on this one, as you can google it. Enjoy.

Also, Bad Skulls' has launched their new site with more awesome shirt designs for every kind of hardcore  music you can think of, and more importantly- Posters and records(mostly Look Back And Laugh stuff, but that's more than OK)

Books Lie:

Brooklyn, NY

1999-2005

Hall of Fame and Fire CD

Level Plane Records 61

2004

And another thing-

If you are interested in cycling, my lame day to day existance, random musings, and anything i enjoy that isn't covered in this blog, please check out my other "personal" blog Hi Losers. . . I'm Here. I'll be getting my laptop back on Friday, and I'll have my real post of the summer up before too long.

More new stuff, still no posts

Right now the only thing hindering uploads is the absence of my computer. Since I rip music from it, it is obviously the second most important element of the sharing process.(after the record/cd/tape, of course). But when it comes back, I'll have a lot of stuff for the summer. Lot of CD rips, and some cool vinyl rips, and a sampler from this baby-

Yep, the Dolcim LP, Guillotine Ride finally hit, just in time for tour. I spent a lot of time this weekend hanging out with my friend Jonathan and Sean(Dolcim's bass player), who is a mutual friend through different circles from many moons ago. Dolcim is heading out on their first tour(today, I think) which is also their first European tour. Doing it up Gorilla Biscuits style, I guess. Needless to say, Sean hooked us up with the CD-R of the 12", and two copies of his solo project, Kafka on the Shore, which is pretty much amazing. Its all instrumental, and is available on tape only at the moment. I'll also be posting up a few select tracks for you at a later date as well.

I also got some other cool records, such as the Urusei Yatsura Drama Special 12" from Japan. Urusei Yatsura is a much beloved Japanese anime TV show from the 80's, and if you like Japanese culture, its probably the best series representation out there. Its full of humor that most non Japanese would have no hope of comprehending if not for extensive translation notes, a familiarity with the language, and too much exposure to Japanese pop culture, history, folklore, etc. As a terminal nerdking, I can say I dig this enough to buy a mint condittion copy of the record and pay for the shiping from Hokkaido. Since there are only two tracks of music (the rest being a promotional radio drama for the second season of the show, in which the important parts of season one are recapped) I'll only be putting up those tracks. Also to come are a metric buttload of 7"s and a smattering of 12" records.

Still more exciting for me is that I am going to be doing some music stuff of my own. Jonathan came to me about two weeks ago with a plan to write and record an album of predominantly instrumental bits. I've been roughing out some guitar parts for the last week, and I think we'll have the rest of the first song written out by the weekend. I'm doing all the guitar and bass, While Jonathan will be doing some percussion, keys, and horn. We'll be bringing in some friends to help as some of the ideas are a little out of our reach as musicians. Mostly it will be some more complicated drum parts that I can write, but not perform(I honestly can't play drums at all... not one single rhythm). And since we happen to be good friends with a pretty damn talented session drummer, He'll be assisting us at points.

The project is called Imperialism After Dark, and we plan to incorporate some familiar bits of pop culture into our music as short melodic fills, modified drum beats, or just jumping off points with little to do with the original works, as has become the case of the song I'm currently churning out.

We have no idea as to when or how the release of this stuff will go down, and the planning isn't all there. Its one of those things where if we don't just get up, rush headlong into it, the thing will go on a dusty shelf of aborted projects, along with a ska punk band, a feature film, a Le Mons race team, and a zine. Its a do or die situation.

More to come-- Stay tuned

shucks-howdy!

So i had a fairly productive weekend that brought two new titles into my vinyl collection. I went to a small CD/Record show in my home town and was about to leave emptyhanded(most of what I wanted I could get elsewhere for less or was available from the lable still.) when i won the door prize of a 25.00 gift certificate to the one vendor who had had nothing I wanted. So i flipped back through and found a demo copy of the Ramones' Leave Home album, notable for still having the song "Carbona not Glue" as opposed to "Baby Sitter". Awesome. I wonder what else that guy had that I over looked? Anyway, with a bit of funds freed up, I was able to also get 97a's Abandoned Future 12" picture disc. Both are in great shape, and I may rip the 97a disc at some point.

I'm also looking into building a collection of anime sound tracks on vinyl too. its fiarly cheap since the demand is low and it looks cool too. The japanese are all about pacaging if you've never looked at the stuff coming out on their major lables. Its pretty elaborate, lots of hardbound liner notes and stuff.

Speaking of Japanese stuff, i gotta couple of Japanese hardcore/emo CDs from the station's great dumping of music that im gonna rip for you all, as well as some other cool things I've found, and expect updates to resume in early May. TTFN!

Cartoons...

. . . have always captivated me. I never grew out of them, and I don't mean "I watch Adult Swim, and think the cartoons are edgy." Don't get me wrong, Adult Swim has done some pretty awesome stuff for cartoons in the eye of the general public, and some of the stuff on the show has really sort of pushed some limits. 12 oz. Mouse comes to mind, ushering in some of the stuff that now comes across as bat-shit insane, such as Superjail, which I love.

Yet so much of these cartoons really are no more weird or bizarre than the cartoons of the late 80's and 90's that were just sort of off the deep end at times. Some older readers may recall that in the 90's and early parts of this decade, MTV seemed to have a deep interest in animation. Many remember the seminal series such as Bevis and Butthead, Daria, Celebrity Deathmatch, and Aeon Flux.

I would say (and I only speculate in the case of the latter most, because I have yet to see it) that these titles live on for good reason, but I daresay many people have long since forgotten shows such as Liquid Television, Oddities, and Cartoon Sushi.These three series were anthologies of typically short cartoons, and often gave rise to other more popular series, such as Bevis et al. and Aeon Flux. But mostly, the segments were one off projects that showcased new faces in animation. Oddities showcased only two cartoons as I recall, both action cartoons, “The Head” and an adaptation of The Maxx comic series. At the time these shows were on the air, my local cable provider either did not offer MTV in expanded basic, or my folks had blocked the station. I eventually caught these shows either as late night reruns several years later or at my grandmother’s house on spring and summer breaks. I have begun looking for videos of these to share for your enjoyment, and expect to see more of those titles filling in the gaps between record uploads on these pages. But what prompted all this?

I decided to diversify the blog for two reasons. First, my record collection is stagnating with my current unemployment. I did luck out and get a bunch off cool CDs when the station had to get rid of everything, and I did get some new records a while back that I am excited about. But ripping takes time I don’t have during the school months and that leads into reason two- I can post more often without compromising my school work or quality of the blog. So I guess we should get started…



I found Rad Boy and Jack Mac on the New Bomb Turks’ myspace. The cartoon is very much a prtoto Bevis and Butthead in some respects, with similar themes such as underage drinking, which kind of makes a proto Superbad, except the cops aren’t cool, and they die. Oh well. The plot revolves around Jack Mac and Rad Boy’s plans to go to a party, but its BYOB. They drive to the store, steal some beer, and begin rocketing down the highway until they collide with a truck hauling nuclear missiles for the government. Along the way, they run over a dog, cause two cops to get hit by a train, a couple car crashes and ultimately the destruction of an entire city.

Animated by Wes Anderson, the cartoon aired in the mid 80’s on USA network’s Night Flight. Anderson was one of the original Simpsons animators for the Tracy Ullman Show and was occasionally a director up to season 7, and went on to work with Fox on King of The Hill as well as some early Futurama. I think more interestingly, is Archer’s new project as supervising director on ABC’c upcoming The Goode Family, a new Mike Judge creation. The new project sees character designs that hearken back to the caricatures of Bevis and Butthead as opposed to the somewhat more realistic King of the Hill. Since the 80’s, Wes Archer has moved into more of the role of crew as opposed to the creative side of things. For The Goode Family, Archer was brought on to direct the pilot and seems to be on board for later episodes. Expect to see the show in the summer season on ABC.

Lux Interior

Is dead. Most of you who keep your fingers on the pulse of punk rock probably already knew this, as it was anounced yesterday. Lux was the front man for seminal punk/garage/rockabilly/rock out fit The Cramps. His passing marks the end of these pioneering punk rock legends. I don't care to go into particulars, you can get those elsewhere, but the death was heart related.

The thing that I want to talk about is the fact im a little weirded out by Lux Interior's death. On Monday, all I listened to were Cramps songs, all day, all night. To find out that the next day their leader was dead is merely coincidence, but a damn weird one no matter how its sliced. I regret that the thing that gets me back into posting is the death of a punk icon. In my circle, this will go on as a foot note, but I know others are bound to be shaken by Lux Interior's death

Just Things

The Beefeater reference in the title is unrelated. The college radio station I work at is purging their CD library, so I have obtained a few more things to put up when the time comes. I think its time I inform the more hardcore oriented that the next 5 or six posts are going to be mostly pop-punk and ska titles. I don't want things to stagnate, and I only have so much hardcore and emo. So if it's not heavy enough for you for the next little bit, stick with it; there will be more to come.

some other house keeping items:

The WHoR discography isn't up. I've uploaded it 4 times and something fucks it up every time. maybe next week.

I am doing a radio show on 88.3 WMTS, Murfreesboro, TN. My co-host and I usually record the show, so maybe i can get you a copy if you like. We play Ska music, and what ever else feels like being played. Everything from Aqua to Charles Bronson to Mineral. But its usually just ska of various flavors. Last week's show was cut short but otherwise we run from 6-8pm Central, and maybe you can listen online sometime soon. Streaming has been down for some time though. You'll be hearing more about the station as the year goes on.