Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Asylum



Just a quick one for the three lonely people interested in my Loinen post last year, please welcome Asilo; Argentina's latest entry into the double bassist / screamo / sludge genre. Absolutely minimalist and completely fucking insane, their most recent release is a split CD with fellow countrymen Tzara and it is an amazing eleven minutes of pounding, miserable, depressing sludge. They've got a few more recordings out there on the web, go check 'em out then kill yourself.

Bandcamp                                                      Download

Currently watching: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Currently listening to: Ice-T The Classic Collection

Saturday, October 8, 2011

R.I.P. Krug Stilo



Man, what a drag it was to hear David Hess passed away on Saturday. Not only was he the lead villain in two of my favorite movies (Last House On The Left and the incredible House On The Edge Of The Park) but he was an accomplished musician who composed one of my favorite horror flick soundtracks (the aforementioned House... er... Last House). And he seemed like a cool guy to boot; enthusiastic over his cult stardom, a horror convention regular, never one to turn down a fan. There's already a wealth of info online regarding his early days as a songwriter for Elvis and Mercury Records A&R rep so I thought I'd skip all that and upload two albums of his - the soundtrack to Last House and his 2001 release Caught Up In The Moment. LHOTL is an amazing album, it reeks like a bad acid trip, full of post-60's influence but way way darker - the untitled "Road Leads To Nowhere"' ditties are almost suicidally bleak. "Ice Cream Song" could easily be used today as some random commercial ditty for Old Navy. "Sadie And Krug" is a wonderful polka-ish tune in the ilk of Zappa's "Jewish Princess" - and the full songs at the end of the album could have easily passed on some random England Dan & John Ford Coley LPs without turning a head. Caught Up In The Moment isn't always my cup of tea, some of the songs are a bit cheesy on the symbolism ("Animal Dreams" for one) to the point that you could imagine Trey Parker singing them. But he is easily redeemed with the hilarious "High" (my personal fave), "Vagabond" and "Nice Girl" - all which dip into the welcome territory of of his 70's sound. Actually, to any Ween fans who read this - he is on par with Chris Harford's music if that means anything to anyone. Anyways, check him out, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. You passed too early Dave, thanks for the memories and the music.

1972                                                                 2001

Currently watching: Look
Currently listening to: The Book Of Mormon

Double Sludge



Noothgrush really was the band that got me into sludge. I alreadly owned some Facedowninshit and Eyehategod and while I dug a couple choice cuts from those bands I wasn't totally sold on the genre as a whole. Enter 1999's epic Erode The Person. Those 13 tracks, compiled from an obscure catalog of split 7-inchers completely jump started my current devotion to the entire sludge/stoner/doom world. Ridiculously lumbering, depressing and heavy, no one has done it better since. The band released another compilation also titled Erode The Person in 2006 which compiled more recent splits and comps - it is just as incredible.

1999                                                                  2006

Currently watching: Slugs
Currently listening to: Hemorrhoidal Anal Suffering Paraphilia Insanity

Friday, October 7, 2011

Live Fast Die Fast



As if followers to this blog couldn't tell, I was a pretty big fan of ol' GG Allin back in the day. I don't know what it was like for the rest of his limited audience in the mid-80's; but for me, being a GG fan was a really personal, introverted thing. I didn't know anyone (even remotely) who'd heard of the guy and the few friends whom I interested with his profanity-laden lyrics steered clear when they actually heard the music. I got all the weird looks and heard all the comments raging from "dude, this isn't even music" (this coming from a guy who thought the musical world peaked with Boston in 1976) to "how do you get off listening to this awful rape rock?" (thanks mom). Taking the NJ Transit into the city to catch his occasional show was a fucking lonely rite of passage, it's not like you're gonna make any new pals sitting around in a dark club at one AM waiting for a guy to smear shit on himself. As the 80's ended it was painfully irritating as the 2 Live Crew controversy raged via evening news as if those Miami boys had really broken some boundaries... I would stare at the endless MTV coverage and be like "so???" Wow, putting porno to music - who gives a shit. I gotta give Luke Skyywalker credit though - at some point in his Banned In The USA videotape (kudos to my bro for stealing that shit from Sam Goody) he actually comments how preposterous the furor over his music is when you got some bands singing about "sticking crosses in nuns private parts and shit" - an obvious nod to GG's "Stick A Cross Up A Nun's Cunt" from his watershed Suicide Sessions. Look at the big brain on Luke! Regardless, I amassed a pretty sweet collection of GG stuff back then (long since sold to buy beer) so I started compiling a fanzine in the style of Bloody F. Mess's inspirational Hated In The Nation zines. It was slow going trying to piece everything together, after quite a bit of work I had something like six pages. And then GG got arrested, and arrested again, and Hated came out, and then he died. Within a short 3 years GG became as mainstream as the Dead Kennedys, opening up a waterfall of media coverage (imagine what his trial would have been like today with 24-hour news channels - sheesh) and great fodder for a zine. All of a sudden I had a 36-page volume called Live Fast Die Fast which was thankfully picked up by GG's pal Skeeter for distribution. I recently found the master templates (including 2 pages which have never been seen before) so I decided to scan them in for posterity's sake and make a PDF. Some pages came out great while others reek of my frantic obsession with filling up space - regardless of chronology. And my little blurbs are kinda retarded but basically hold the whole thing together (interesting to note how through some of the mag GG wasn't dead yet so I use the present tense - weird) so I'm not that embarassed to offer it up to all you sick fuckers. Enjoy.
 
Currently watching: Frenzy
Currently listening to: Shit Happiness Chords