MRML has discussed the fearsome power of The Ruts before and will certainly do so again - that's just how we roll. As part of that on-going dialogue, here's the COMPLETE Peel Sessions, the 18 track version (including the Ruts DC's 1981 session).
COMMENTS? YES, COMMENTS!
Speaking of that wonderful comments section, that is where you'll find the complete Peel Session link.
Hey, come check out the Top Ten List of albums that I missed from 2010! at THE BIG TAKEOVER!
From the year 2000, when boots like this were a hot item, comes this collection of (mostly) UK punk obscurica from that spit n' speed drenched era.
* Suzy Lie Down (Cramp, N. Ireland, 1979, from only 7") * Future Fun (00.3 Minutes, USA, 1980, from only 7") * Schoolgirl Junkie (Screaming Dead, UK, 1982, from only 7") * Snap It Around (48 Chairs, UK, 1979, from only 7") * Tour Of China (Pink Section, USA, 1979, from only 7") * My Mind Wanders (Toys, UK, 1979, from 1.7") * My Way (Joe Cool & The Killers, UK, 1977, from only 7") * UFO Pt. 2 (Eddie Fiction, UK, 1979, from only 7") * Little White Lines (VDUs, UK, 1980, from only 7") * Don't Just Sit There (Scabs, UK, 1979, from only 7") * Electric Heat (Visitors, Scotland, 1979, from 2.7") * I Don't Wanna Know (Voice Of The Puppets, 1980, from only 7") * Prams (Vital Disorder, UK, 1981, from 1.7") * You Can't Rock'n Roll (In A Council Flat) (Puncture, UK, 1977, from only 7") * The K9 Hassle (K9's, UK, 1979, from only 7") * Phonies (Dazzlers, UK, 1978, from 1.7")
If you'd like MRML to dredge up more obscurer-than-dirt obscurities than please leave us a comment!
Speaking of the COMMENTS section, that's where you'll find Neighbour Annoyer (Original Punk Rock From the Vaults ('77-'82) link. 323434
This thirty-THREE (!) volume series features artists covering Bob Dylan songs. All of the tracks are recordings of independent origin (ROIO) and hence officially unreleased.
Another fascinating roll-call; Waylon Jennings, The Waterboys, Uncle Tupelo, T-Bone Burnett, The Jayhawks The Dixie Chicks and many others besides.
01 Things Have Changed - Waylon Jennings (Sep 23, 2000, Lanierland Music Park, Cumming, Georgia) 02 Tangled Up in Blue - T Bone Burnett (Feb 24, 1994, KPFA Studios, Berkeley, CA) 03 You Ain't Going Nowhere - Steve Wynn, Robert Fisher, Deanna Varagona and Walter Salas-Humara (Jul 5, 2002, The Borderline, London, England) 04 Legionnaire's Disease - Delta Cross Band (Jun 24, 1980, Tonkraft, Sweden) 05 Ye Playboys and Playgirls - The Jayhawks (Feb 21, 1985, 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN) 06 A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall - Uncle Tupelo (Aug 25, 1989, Cicero's, St. Louis, MO) 07 Mississippi - The Dixie Chicks (July 29, 2006, TD Banknorth Garden, Boston,MA) 08 Forever Young - Watkins Family Hour with Benmont Tench (Mar 22, 2007, Largo, Los Angeles, CA) 09 Percy's Song - Arlo Guthrie (Dec 3, 1998, The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI) 10 George Jackson/ I Shall Be Released - Joan Baez (May 21, 1977, Orpheum, Boston, MA) 11 Lay Lady Lay - Cassandra Wilson (Jun 30, 2003, Sala Kongresowa, Warsaw, Poland) 12 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight - Curtis Stigers (Jul 16, 2007, BBC Jazz Awards, Mermaid Theatre, London, England) 13 Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Jerry Garcia Band with Clarence Clemons (Sep 10, 1989, Great Woods, Mansfield, MA) 14 Death is Not the End - The Waterboys (May 4, 1986, Golddigger's, Chippenham, England)
If you'd like the series to continue - - - please don't forget to leave a comment behind!
Speaking of comments, the Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan Volume Twenty-Five link is in there.
Thanks to Jeffs98119 for compiling these and to stewART for the images.
Thanks to Karl Erik @ Expecting Rain for tagging these for iTunes
For V.'s 1-24 of Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan go here
For slugline's impressive spreadsheet of the whole series go here
Quite the soundtrack here for this cult punxploitation film from 1980. It's said that the guiding hand of RSO Records chief Robert Stigwood, who wanted Times Square to be the next Saturday Night Fever, forced the inclusion of some of dreckier tunes herein. As for the rest of it, it's a great cross-section of English and American punk/new wave/proto-punk et al.
Side one 1. Suzi Quatro: "Rock Hard" (Mike Chapman, Nicky Chinn) – 3:18 2. The Pretenders: "Talk of the Town" (Chrissie Hynde) – 3:16 3. Roxy Music: "Same Old Scene" (Bryan Ferry) – 3:54 4. Gary Numan: "Down in the Park" (Gary Numan) – 4:20 5. Robin Gibb and Marcy Levy: "Help Me!" (Robin Gibb, Blue Weaver) – 3:37
Side two 1. Talking Heads: "Life During Wartime" (David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz) – 3:40 2. Joe Jackson: "Pretty Boys" (Joe Jackson) – 3:27 3. XTC: "Take This Town" (Andy Partridge) – 4:08 4. Ramones: "I Wanna Be Sedated" (Joey Ramone) – 2:29 5. Robin Johnson: "Damn Dog" (Billy Mernit, Jacob Brackman) – 2:40
Side three 1. Robin Johnson and Trini Alvarado: "Your Daughter Is One" (Mernit, Norman Ross, Brackman) – 2:10 2. The Ruts: "Babylon's Burning" (John Jennings, Dave Ruffy, Malcolm Owen, Paul Fox) – 2:34 3. D.L. Byron: "You Can't Hurry Love" (Edward Holland, Jr., Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland)– 3:04 4. Lou Reed: "Walk on the Wild Side" (Lou Reed) – 4:12 5. Desmond Child and Rouge: "The Night Was Not" (Desmond Child) – 3:08
Side four 1. Garland Jeffreys: "Innocent, Not Guilty" (Garland Jeffreys) – 2:13 2. The Cure: "Grinding Halt" (Robert Smith, Michael Dempsey, Lol Tolhurst) – 2:49 3. Patti Smith Group: "Pissing in the River" (Patti Smith, Ivan Kral) – 4:41 4. David Johansen and Robin Johnson: "Flowers of the City" (David Johansen, Ronnie Guy) – 3:58 5. Robin Johnson: "Damn Dog" (Reprise - The Cleo Club) (Mernot, Brackman) – 2:40
Leave us some words on this OST, and it's strange mix of artists.
Speaking of COMMENTS, that's where you'll find the Times Square link
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For more Pretenders go here, for more Talking Heads go here, for more Joe Jackson go here, for more Ramones go here, for more of Ruts go here, for more Lou Reed go here for more Patti Smith go here.
Basically, everything to do with this film and it's soundtrack is so far out of print that even the damn cassette pictured above goes for $50.00 on Amazon!
Joe Jackson (not the Shoeless one nor the father of the departed one-gloved one) defined "new wave", back when I was nine. Jackson got through to our suburban battery-powered a.m. radios (the seventies precursor to the Walkmans, iPods and the digital implants to come). Jackson may have only been another pub rocker posing as the face of disaffected youth, railing against the media, consumerism and the opposite sex but by creating killer pop songs out of such material, he beat the punks at their own game.
in 1980, in-between his stunning first two album and his more problematic third one (his career only grows more thorny as it goes on), Jackson released a three song single that remains almost unknown. It's a perfect distillation of his career up till then,with an up-tempo reggae song (Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come") a sneering rocker ("Outta Style") and a taut ballad ("Tilt"). Don't miss out on this thirty-year old secret.
Give us your take on the strange career arc of Mr. Joe Jackson in the comments section.
Speaking of which, the link for The Harder They Come E.P. is in the COMMENTS section.
This one volume series (so far...) features artists covering Leonard Cohen songs. All of the tracks are recordings of independent origin (ROIO) and hence officially unreleased.
As a Canadian in good standing, I'm a staunch Leonard Cohen supporter, though I've never felt compelled to own much beyond a few different collections. That said, my first distinct encounter with a Cohen song was Concrete Blonde's devastating take on "Everybody Knows" famously used in "Pump up the Volume:"
So this series takes on the admirable goal of showing the breadth of Cohen's influence without resorting to 17 versions of "Hallelujah" (While many are finished with that track, I still believe that it has a power that no onslaught of hacks can destroy). Instead the compiler has chosen to choose strong Cohen covers by a wide array of artists, like The Waterboys, Ron Sexsmith, John Wesley Harding, Tom Russel and, brilliantly, Johnny Cash:
01 Hallelujah - The Waterboys (version 1) (Jul 19, 2008, Burg Herzberg Festival, Breitenbach, Germany) 02 Avalanche - Chris and Carla (Aug 12, 2006, Heilig Kreuz Kirche, Berlin, Germany) 03 Bird on the Wire - Johnny Cash ( 1994, University of Texas, Austin, TX) 04 Dance Me to the End of Love - Madeleine Peyroux (Mar 29, 2007, Estudios de Música de RNE, Madrid) 05 The Guests - Antony and the Johnsons (May 26, 2005, Festival Territorios Sonoros, Sevilla) 06 Heart with No Companion - Ron Sexsmith (Sep 30, 1997, TT the Bear's Place, Cambridge, MA) 07 Sisters of Mercy - Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt (Sep 30, 1999, Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA) 08 Chelsea Hotel #2 - Josh Ritter (Feb 15, 2007, Horseshoe Tavern) 09 Suzanne - James Taylor (Fe 2, 2009, BBC2, London) 10 One of Us Cannot Be Wrong - The Dresden Dolls (May 18, 2008 The Fillmore San Francisco, CA) 11 Everybody Knows - Concrete Blonde (Mar 17, 1991, The Vic, Chicago, IL) 12 Famous Blue Raincoat - Richard Shindell (Nov 11, 2004, The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI) 13 The Smokey Life - Anjani (Apr 27, 2007, 14 Tonight Will Be Fine - David Blue and Jackson Browne (8-22-72 WBCN Studios Boston MA) 15 Joan of Arc - John Wesley Harding (Jan 29, 2005, Schubas, chicago, IL) 16 Tower of Song - Tom Russell (Apr 20, 2001, Columbus Music Hall, Columbus, OH) 17 Hallelujah - Brandi Carlisle and the Seattle (Version 2) (Nov 29, 2008, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA)
Please add a comment about this collection or L.C. in general.
Speaking of COMMENTS, that is the section wherein you will the Sincerely, L. Cohen link
Update Compiler jeffs98119 adds:
1) The cover painting is by Joni Mitchell, who was involved with Cohen for a brief time.
2) Cohen has released two versions of Hallelujah with different verses (one on Various Positions, the other on Cohen Live). On this compilation, the Waterboys do one version, Brandi Carlisle the other.
Thanks to Jeffs98119 for compiling this and to stewART for the images.
Thanks to Karl Erik @ Expecting Rain for tagging the songs for iTunes
For the related series, Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan gohere
Further to our last post, let us consider The Soup Dragons. The Scottish band arose from the c86 scene (they're on the original cassette), originally sounded like a punk revival band (Buzzcocks division) but had their greatest success as a part of the Madchester/"Baggy" sound (a Rolling Stones cover, "I'm Free"). Despite finding that cover pleasant, there's a vicious power to these earliest recording that the band never even glimpsed again.
The Soup Dragons - Peel Session 24/2/1986
1. Whole Wide World 2. Too Shy To Say 3. Learning To Fall 4. Just Mind Your Step Girl
Don't forget to leave a comment about The Soup Dragons
On a related note, the COMMENTS section is where you'll find the Peel Sessions Link
Somewhere between the C-86 movement and the Madchester (a.k.a. 'baggy' ) scene, there was a little British punk revival in the late 80's. Bands like Mega City Four, Red Letter Day, Senseless Things et al toured the country in ratty t-shirts, put out seven inches and kept the guitars and tempos rared up. Though they came to North American shores on the heels of The Stone Roses, The Charlatans and The Happy Mondays, Ned's Atomic Dustbin never sounded much like part of that so-called "second summer of love", after all their most memorable song is called "Kill Your Television".
Don't forget to leave a comment with your take on Ned's Atomic Dustbin Speaking of comments, that is where you find the Kill Your Television link
It's hard to discuss Mega City Four (lots here) without mentioning their sister band, The Senseless Things. By the time I got anything by them, it was the toned-down major label album, The First of Too Many (perhaps a bit like hearing Sebastopal Rd. as your first MC4) so my interest in them remained low. However, I had a request for some ST's (The Thingies?, If I know the British, the band has some sort of cute nickname), so I gave a the early stuff a fresh spin and it sounded nothing but fine:
1 Passions Out Of Town 2 I've Lost My Train 3 When You Let Me Down 4 The Only One 5 Tangled Lines 6 Leo/Is It Too Late? 7 Tell Me What's On Your Mind 8 Someone's Talking 'Bout You 9 Touch Me On The Heath 10 Jerk 11 Role Models 12 Christian Killer
Tracks 1 to 4 - 27/4/1988 Tracks 5 to 8 - 21/3/1990 Tracks 9 to 12 - 20/11/1993
Don't forget to leave us a comment!
Speaking of COMMENTS, that is the section where you will find the Peel Sessions link.
This rip comes from Wilgy (much thanks to him and a thank-you post is on the way) and preserves the band's battle-hardened live show (at their peak they were playing 200 shows a year) circa 1992.
Even six posts into a lengthy series, we STILL very much appreciate fresh comments:
Speaking of which, the COMMENTS section is where you will find the link for Inspiringly Titled The Live Album
So as my "final" MC4 post of this series (there'll be another soon enough) here's the Shivering Sand Live 7", which includes the band's run-through of Hüsker Dü's "Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely".
(It's like a a medley but there's not much prime MC4 footage floating around.)
Peel Sessions Recorded On 19th July 1988 1 Clear Blue Sky 3:03 2 Alternative Arrangements 3:05 3 Severe Attack Of The Truth 2:43 4 January 3:35 5 Distant Relatives 3:20
Peel Sessions Recorded On 19th September 1993 6 Stay Dead 4:10 7 Clown 4:17 8 Prague 3:59 9 Slow Down 4:17
COMMENTS are always a good thing!!
Speaking of which, Peel Sessions link is in the COMMENTS section
This thirty-THREE (!) volume series features artists covering Bob Dylan songs. All of the tracks are recordings of independent origin (ROIO) and hence officially unreleased.
I'm convinced that this series grows stronger as it goes. It's probably the ever-lessening percentage of blues-jam sorta stuff - see Healey, Jeff (R.I.P.) here - and the even greater abundance of more left-field rock, country and folk material that biases me towards these later volumes. Of course, some might argue this set is dominated by so-called "Dad-Rock" what with it having Neil Young dueling with Bruce Springsteen:
Not to mention the sadly departed Warren Zevon doing an oft-neglected Dylan ballad:
But of course there's also Robyn Hitchcock doing "Lo & Behold" with an interpolation of the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime", alongside eighties L.A. cow punks, The Textones doing the hard-to-call-it-neglected track, "Clean-Cut Kid":
01 One More Night - Elana James (May 30, 2007, Club Passim, Cambridge, MA) 02 To Be Alone with You - Steve Gibbons Band (SWF3 Festival, November 2, 1981) 03 Is Your Love in Vain - Steve Kilbey (Oct 29, 2006, Phoenix Community Reserve, East Malvern, Melbourne, Aus) 04 Lo and Behold - Robyn Hitchcock and the Nashville Crawdads (Mar 18, 2007, Belcourt Thetre, Nashville, TN) 05 Blind Willie McTell - Steve Wynn and John Wesley Harding (Feb 8 1998, Den Bosch, Netherlands) 06 Clean Cut Kid - The Textones (Nov 20, 1987, Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA) 07 Gates of Eden - Bryan Ferry (Apr 2, 2007, Tempodrom, Berlin, Ger) 08 Blowin' in the Wind - Joe Ely (Dec 31, 1990, Austin Coliseum, Austin, TX) 09 License to Kill - Roseanne Cash Apr 6, 2003, Mountain Stage, Cultural Center Auditorium, Charleston, WV) 10 Slow Train Coming - North Mississippi All Stars (May 11, 2007, WorkPlay Sound Stage, Birmingham, AL) 11 When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky - Jeff Healy Band (Apr 30, 1989, PC 69, Bielefeld, Ger) 12 All Along the Watchtower - Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (Oct 5, 2004, Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul, MN) 13 Masters of War - Ben Harper and Tom Morello (Jun 9, 2007, Harrah's Casino, Council Bluffs, IA) 14 Dark Eyes - Warren Zevon (Mar 4, 2000, Park West, Chicago, IL)
If you'd like the series to continue - - - please don't forget to leave a comment behind!
Speaking of comments, the Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan Volume Twenty-Four link is in there.
Thanks to Jeffs98119 for compiling these and to stewART for the images.
Thanks to Karl Erik @ Expecting Rain for tagging the songs for iTunes
For V.'s 1-23 of Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan go here
For slugline's impressive spreadsheet of the whole series go here
Okay I sold my vinyl copy of Mega City Four's second album, Who Cares Wins, back in '91 and probably didn't regret it much till yesterday. It's an album that grows on you slowly, in my case, glacially. My initial disappointment stemmed from a certain sameness to the record's sound and shortage of those magical Wiz hooks. Perhaps I expected something along the lines of The Doughboys' sophomore album, Home Again where the sensitive-pop-kids-with-loud-guitars shtick went 3-D, with sympathetic production and a commensurate leap in songwriting strength. But that's not quite the way of this album,which employs most of the lyrical and musical tricks of their earlier work without adding any one obviously new element.
But a consistent MC4 album is no bad thing. Instead of the songs leaping out at you, they skulk in the shadows waiting to found and appreciated; it's a very passive-aggressive as pop albums go.
One of the least surreptitious moments of the album is "No Such Place As Home" which packs an album's worth of hooks into 4:09.
So, give WCW a spin and see if it takes less than 20 years to grow on you.
So (as per yesterday's post), WHY did I sell those Mega City Four CD's? I could proffer dozens of reasons ranging from the financial to the spiritual to the practical but the clearest motivations in that case were geography, climate and history.
Y'see, I discovered the MC4 while sharing a basement apartment with my girlfriend in the wet climes of Vancouver, British Columbia in the early 90's. With the sound of grunge roaring all around me, I focused on things faster, catchier and perhaps a bit tinnier, like the MC4. I first found Tranziphobia, then Terribly Sorry Bob (my favourites!) then Who Cares Wins and the Live Album and finally, Sebastopal Rd. on vinyl, all of which I sold and replaced with CD's. I played tapes of those albums on my ever-present Walkman during a hundred downpours (mostly literal but a few more metaphorical ones) and those songs became attached to that mountainous place, that damp environment and that specific girlfriend.
So when I returned to my home in the yawning prairies, perhaps something of me got left in a West Vancouver dumpster. Maybe that loss of place and the great break-up that was soon to follow, pushed me to jettison a few necessities amongst the genuine dead weight.
Rest in Peace, Wiz - I'll correct my mistake one day.
Here's a cool live 7" from 1992, which has no overlap with the collection of rarities posted yesterday. (For Much More Megas - go here.)
Have you ever regretted something you've sold? Tell us about it in the comments section!
Speaking of the comments section, that's where you'll find the link for Stop (Live)
I sold all my Mega City 4 CD's during an epic purge back in the mid-90's and it remains one of my most regretted transactions. (For looooots more MC4 at MRML go here)
Now, in celebration of regular COMMENTER CallPastorJekface (who did our guest post on the band's Sebastopal Rd., which earned over 500 D/L's!!) finally tracking down a copy of Terribly Sorry Bob let's give a listen to this bootleg collection of MC4 B-sides (where some of their best songs were relegated to).
Leave us a comment with your take on the MC4!!!
Speaking of the comments section, that's where you'll find the link for B-Sides & Rarities
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones odd-ball stew of 2-Tone ska, Boston HxCx and seventies hard rock didn't always suit everyone's taste but the band really grew throughout the nineties as song-writers and performers and were a surprise, if short-lived entry into the pop charts in the 1997 with "The Impression That I Get".
This 1994 single shows off Dicky Barret's, whose throaty bellow can divide listeners, increasing lyrical sharpness and the band's ability to arrange a song to life.
Whaddya make of these here Bosstones? Leave us a comment
Speaking of comments, the Someday I Suppose link will be found there.
For our list of top ten great Fishbone video moments, please come visit The Big Takeover!
A little more Fishbone (See here) for y'all. This time it's a rare 1987 Christmas-themed EP (hey, I'm from Winnipeg where it looks a lot like Christmas from November through till March) that shows off the band at full-effect, doing a punk song, a soul song, a reggae song and a funk song.
1. "It's a Wonderful Life (Gonna Have a Good Time)" N. Fisher/C. Dowd/A. Moore 3:02 2. "Slick Nick, You Devil You" C. Dowd/A. Moore 4:40 3. "Iration" K. Jones/P. Fisher/C. Dowd 4:38 4. "Just Call Me Scrooge" W. Kibby II/A. Moore 2:32
Leave us a comments about this Fishbone work!
Speaking of which, the It's a Wonderful Life E.P. link is in the comments section!
MRML is a blog about the devestating effects of culture: music, politics, comics plus etc. blah blah blah. At times MRML will post fine, unpurchasable three-chord obscurica (punk, pop-punk, new wave, mod, power-pop, gospel, reggae, hardcore, rockabilly, folk, country...whatever.) - - - - - - "The otherwise unavailable files in this blog are posted for a limited time and are intended for educational, non-commercial use. These files were transcribed from what are believed to be out-of-print sources. If you are aware of any of these items being readily available from commercial sources, or if any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us so that we can quickly remove the referenced items immediately." - - - SUPPORT THE ARTISTS - BUY MUSIC!
If you have any questions or music to donate you can contact me at musicruinedmylife (at) gmail (dot) com
Re: Re-Ups
MRML does not plan to restore all of the content lost in The Great Mediafire Gutting of 2012. Polite requests may be made in the appropriate section, regular commenters will get priority.
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