I recently stumbled upon this impeccable DAT soundboard-quality bootleg of a November 1994 performance by Ride, though bootleg may not be the right word. This recording often appears on the band discographies, but Ride never gave permission for an “official release.” Hence, before the mighty intarwebz, Live Light was available only in Japan.

Particularly special about this recording is that, given the date, this was probably the last document of the original Ride in their prime. Carnival of Light, released earlier that year, was Ride’s White Album. Chief songwriters Andy Bell and Mark Gardener were majorly bummed on each other, creating a huge rift in continuity on Light. Bell, as you may know, went on to join Oasis after the group’s demise in early ‘96. Talk about a rebound date.

Live Light was taped in either Lyon or Nancy, France according to the Ride Gigography. The album’s liner notes don’t specify. Either way, it is absolutely necessary for any shoegaze fan to have this swan song document of the genre’s premiere artist. Hence, I’m offering it at the link below. It’s the CD version of the bootleg. There was a light blue 2LP version as well that featured two songs not available on the disc (”Twisterella” and “Drive Blind,” the latter I’d love to hear). If anyone has those jams, holla at ya boi Bloggins here.

ZIP :::
Ride – Live Light (approx. 77 MB)

MP3 :::
Ride – Chelsea Girl (Live – 11/94, France)
Ride – Leave Them All Behind (Live – 11/94, France)
Ride – Close My Eyes (Live – 11/94, France)

The now defunct Virginia-based Skywave is a name you might not recognize, but their lineage is rather important in the second generation shoegaze (or “newgaze” as it’s sometimes referred) movement. Synthstatic is certainly their best, and I first heard it my freshman year in college in 2003 when we received the record at the ol’ campus radio station. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard at the time, and I think I played a cut off it during my show every week for six months. It might still be the loudest record I own, save for maybe Guitar Wolf, which is just ridiculous. I don’t know, man – point is, it’s real goddamn loud.

Every song sounds as if the mix is utterly and completely in the red – at all times. It’s the type of production that would make most audiophile-sensitive producers shit. Skywave’s wall of sound is downright frightening. Throw “Angela’s an Angel” on your ghetto blaster and feel your tweeters jump about a quarter inch at the 1:22 mark. With that said, rays of light peak through the decibel decimation on sweet dream pop numbers like “Adore,” “Wear This Dress,” and “I Believe.” “Fire” is still my favorite track after all these years, though. That jam is evil.

As per a frame of reference, Skywave is a fine concoction of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s darker moments on Psychocandy, the more bombastic selections off of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything, and the extremely tight rhythm of any given Echo & the Bunnymen record.

After Skywave split, the former members went on to form two bands you may be more familiar with – A Place to Bury Strangers and Ceremony. If you listen to the aforementioned, however, they both sound just like Skywave, right? Synthstatic is the all-in-one sinister jam hive to own.

I generally don’t do this, since I run a professional music blog, you see, and I always encourage our readers to support the artist. But Synthstatic is out of print and hustlers be tryin’ to flip copies of it for, like, $75. Hell naw; fuck that shit. Kenny Bloggins gon’ give it 2 u: Skywave – Synthstatic (ZIP archive, approx. 68 Mb). Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.

For fans of:  My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, A Place to Bury Strangers

MP3 :::
Skywave – Fire
Skywave – Angela’s an Angel
Skywave – Adore

Whoever said you can’t judge a book by its cover is an asshole. I was introduced to The Folklords‘ Release the Sunshine whilst poking around Ear X-Tacy over the weekend. Like magnetism, my eyes locked on this record that was on display in the psych/kraut/experimental section from rather far away. The kaleidoscopic band photo with a Polaroid-washed palette, Indian-inspired hippie chic wardrobes, and the album’s title imposed over a doily-like paisley sun in the upper right hand corner – oh hell yes, this record’s going to be very relevant to my interests. And they’re called the fuckin’ Folklords. You know this is shit’s gonna be rowdy. So I picked it up.

The record sounds exactly as the album art suggests – good vibin’, sunny, spellbinding, lazy and hazy psychedelic electric folk with serious zither and autoharp solos in tow. Originally released in 1968 on Canadian imprint Allied Records, little is known about this Toronto trio and their only album. Their obscurity says nothing about the quality of the music – only that the late ’60s were quite a competitive period for this type of sound. As the liner notes suggest (and I agree), the Folklords, strangely enough, sound closer to the Creation Records groups of the mid ’80s, the British bands emulating the timbre of flower power, than many of their contemporaries in 1968. This is especially pervasive on “Thank You For Your Kindness,” included below. You can extrapolate whatever you will from this sentiment.

Release the Sunshine isn’t anything you haven’t heard before, but it’s exciting nonetheless to find a pretty good document of Canada’s response to the west coast sound – one that was swept under the rug, no less. Fortunately, Lion Productions, who specialize in grabbing obscure psychedelia and craftily remastering their finds, recently released this gem, and its available here.

For fans of:  West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, The Left Banke, Margo Guryan

MP3 :::
The Folklords – Forty Seconds River
The Folklords – Thank You For Your Kindness

I recently started exploring the realms of what was known as the Paisley Underground, a movement mostly around Los Angeles in the early to mid ’80s that acted as a reaction to the machismo of the hardcore scene percolating at that time. The groups involved in the Paisley Underground (a moniker that, like punk, was meant as a joke) wanted to spread peace and love again through candy-ass rock and roll. Some very incredible albums came from this movement, and not all were specific to LA (Soft Boys and Big Star come to mind). While The Dream Syndicate and The Three O’Clock probably championed the scene the most, The Rain Parade’s austere yet lavish 1983 album Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is my pick of the litter. This album rips.

If “I Look Around” sounds familiar, The Asteroid #4 covered it last fall on These Flowers Of Ours. Jangly, lush, gorgeous – Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is unrelentingly powerfully, probably because it’s the perfect balance between two significant movements in rock – ’60s psych, and C86 dream pop. “This Can’t Be Today” is the type of unequivocally perfect, slightly askew pop song that makes everything else sound shitty. Everything. I mean, really, after hearing a song so flawless, it makes me want to go find the members of poppycock groups like Passion Pit, roundhouse kick ‘em in the domes, steal their money, and donate it to the formers members of the band. While The Rain Parade never saw much commercial success before their split in 1986, vocalist David Roback went on to form two other excellent bands – Opal, and the mighty motherfuckin’ Mazzy Star. So Roback still got real paid in the end, I suppose.

Though Rain Parade’s original label, Restless, is no longer around, Ryko still distributes Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, but not widely. Hence, if you don’t live near a rather large record store, your best bet is to grip it through Amazon. Which you should. Amazing that there was a time when indie rock didn’t suck, yes?

MP3 :::
The Rain Parade – This Can’t Be Today
The Rain Parade – 1 Hour and 1/2 Ago
The Rain Parade – I Look Around

Continuing the Contraband series, showcasing various finds and older, often out of print, records that deserve some ink in the blogololosphere, today we discuss Swirlies and three albums – Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, What to Do About Them, and They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons – all of which are very worthy of your attention.

Swirlies served as a Yankee response to the Thames Valley-centric shoegazing movement, though it could still be argued that Swirlies didn’t necessarily fit nicely in that box either. The group masterfully amalgamated both dream and noise pop aesthetics like champs, while also pioneering what was known as “chimp rock,” or music with a deliberately childlike, uncouth approach to songwriting.  Though they’ve not done a whole lot in more recent times, it’s worth noting that Swirlies never officially disbanded. As a matter of fact, they recently resurfaced to play three east coast shows in February.

What to Do About Them, released in 1992, is rather cohesive for a debut EP. Under the soundboard-clipping washes of noise is a touch of bubblegum pop that carved a niche for Swirlies as America’s The Vaselines. Dig the sweet and sour “Chris R” and anthemic “Upstairs.”

Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, released in 1993, maintains the typical cadence and aesthetic of the time as a freewheeling, sloppy recording. One important distinction, however, is Swirlies’ mastery of the quiet/loud dynamic. Songs like “Bell” have a real Ride quality in terms of soaring melodies and silky guitars – minus any sort of production, of course.

While Swirlies’ 1995 album They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons is still in print, it isn’t widely released, discussed, or revered, and that’s an abject bummer. Compared to their noisier, more disjointed previous releases, …Salons features cleaner production and more sophisticated, concise songwriting, ostentatiously because it is, indeed, a latter album and the members are older, etc. However, the band proves they still don’t give a shit by way of their classic muddy, brutal distortion. The liner notes state that no synthesizers have ever been used in Swirlies, making some of the sounds scattered on “Sound of Sebring” over the ’90s-centric, tinty, active rhythm quite curious indeed.

MP3 :::
Swirlies – Upstairs
Swirlies – Chris R
Swirlies – Pancake
Swirlies – Park the Car By the Side of the Road
Swirlies – In Harmony New Found Freedom
Swirlies – Sound of Sebring
Swirlies – Sunn

Recently, I discovered I had quite a volume of unmarked CD-Rs lying about my personal caverns (closets, that is, not some strange sexual euphemism). Last night, I gripped L-Train’s industrial-strength Sony Walkman (remember those?) and went through 30 or so unnamed CDs. I found some amazing stuff – much of which I will share with you over the next few weeks. A lot of tracks I found were certainly of the older, rare, and/or out of print variety, as I pirated a lot of music from my former college radio station WRFL, where I dwelled for most of my college career. The station pretty much had a “don’t throw anything away” policy since its inception in 1988, so it’s a veritable museum (though certain titles were stolen at some point in the past obviously). This is why you see a new category called “Contraband.” Since the concepts are somewhat similar, entries from Cut-Out Bin Classics and Vinyl Finds have been consolidated into one easy, low-APR category. The MP3 categories, as always, refers to hawt new traxxx (or easier to find music).

The first awesome find in last night’s excursion is the 1992 self-titled album by The Nightblooms. The Nightblooms were, as often is the case, an underappreciated collective from The Netherlands who only released two albums. Shoegazing is certainly the easiest reference point, as the group concealed melodic vocals under massive Big Muff guitar sounds. However, the Nightblooms were not nearly as ethereal as, say, Lush – the group packed a crunchy punch… almost reminiscent of a sped-up stoner metal band. You also hear an amalgamation of fuzz, punk, noise, and twee a la The Vaselines. There’s very little information on the group and I have yet to find any interviews on the intarwebz. If you find something, please send it my way! Otherwise, enjoys these rare gems perfect for warming weather.

For fans of: Lush, The Vaselines, Velocity Girl, Aislers Set

MP3 :::
The Nightblooms – Panicle
The Nightblooms – 59#1
The Nightblooms – Slowly Rising

Man or Astro-man? sounded like The Ventures after being anally probed by aliens and promptly dumped behind a Radio Shack. In fact, the band claims to be from outer space but rumor has it they surfed out of the same Auburn, Alabama scene as the Immortal Lee County Killers and The Quadrajets.

Dropping science on top of surf guitars, MoAM toured the country with a wagonload of retro tech including theremins and even a homemade tesla coil which remarkably never resulted in a Spinal Tap moment of spontaneous combustion. The band also built its own supercomputer called Eeviac which is reputed to be the most powerful supercomputer ever used on stage by a rock band.

What Remains Inside a Black Hole was an Aussie import on Au-Go-Go Records which compiled many of the band’s early 7” singles. The live version of “Eric Estrotica” was originally included on Man or Astro-man? Vs. Europa while “Adios Johnny Bravo” – complete with Brady Bunch samples – was incarnated in wax on Possession by Remote Control.  Estrus later released a domestic facsimile, Beyond the Black Hole, which included many but not all of the tracks on the Au-Go-Go release.

Bands with a schtick are sometimes entertaining, sometimes annoying. In the realm of entertainment, MoAM’s live shows rank at the head of the class. Certainly well above the toilet antics of GWAR though not quite as retro as The Mummies. For a little teaser check out this snippet from the YooTubes:

MP3 :::
Man… or Astro-Man? – Eric Estrotica (Live in Space)
Man… or Astro-Man? – Adios Johnny Bravo

I’m not sure if Edward Murrow was a household name for this generation before 2005’s Good Night and Good Luck came out. I hope so, as Edward Murrow was the greatest American broadcast journalist of all time, and arguably the greatest journalist of any medium anywhere.  His elegant, almost poetic prose and his bravery – from reporting on rooftops in London during the Blitzkrieg (”this… is London”) to telling Joe McCarthy he’s a moron on live television – is unmatched, especially in our current 24-hour news paradigm.

With our current economic (and sometimes social) turmoil, it’s certainly as relevant now as ever before to listen to the sound of history as told by one of its best orators, in a time Murrow called the most exciting and dramatic thirteen years in American history. This record, I Can Hear It Now, Vol. 1, does just that – documents a sort of “greatest hits” between 1933 and 1945, what Murrow calls “a scrapbook of sound” (which is a bite I think DJ Shadow uses as a sample, but I forget the song).

Rather than simply a recount of the most famous speeches and recordings any student of U.S. history will be familiar with, I Can Hear It Now gathers every major milestone that was important at that time, without an outsider or historical perspective (it was released shortly after the war in 1948). Pearl Harbor and the 1940 Republican nomination of Wendell Willkie, the prayer of a pilot before commandeering the Enola Gay, Roosevelt and Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain and Joe Louis are all given a respectable chunk of time on this record. Of course, some of the more famous quotations make the cut, such as the Hindenburg “oh the humanity,” but also rare speeches by Stalin.

I found this at a garage sale a couple of years ago – why would someone sell this? The record is both uplifting and spooky – the sound of immeasurable fear during wartime juxtaposed against how all of us can make some lemonade of the situation(s).  Pretty powerful.

I’ve transcribed the back of the record, which describes what you’re hearing in each broadcast collage, or “band,” exactly as it appears (save for the unnecessary capitalization that I assume was AP style in the ’40s).  The end of band five reveals where Murrow got his trademark phrase “good night and good luck” (which is where Keith Olbermann got his phrase, if ya’lls were unaware).

Band One

• Will Rogers talks about America and the Depression, 1932
• Franklin D Roosevelt assumes the Presidency on March 4, 1933 “Nothing to Fear but Fear.”
• Senator Huey Long, the Louisiana King-Fish and his “Share the Wealth” program, just prior to his assassination on September 8, 1935
• The Duke of Windsor Abdicates for “the woman I love,” December 11, 1936

Band Two

• Fiorello H LaGuardia wages war against the “Ward Heelers”
• Alfred Landon campaigns for the Presidency, 1936
• “Rendezvous with Destiny” speech; Franklin D Roosevelt at Franklin Field, Philadelphia, June 27, 1936
• John L. Lewis castigates those who have deserted Labor (Labor Day, 1937)
• the Hindenburg Air Disaster, Lakehurst, NK, May 6, 1937; Herbert Morrison of WLS, Chicago, at the scene

Band Three

• September 30, 1938 at Munich
• Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returns from Munich and tells of his meeting with Hitler, September 27, 1938
• Adolf Hitler lashes out against Eduard Benes and the Sudetenland, September 26, 1938
• Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, Yankee Stadium, June 22, 1938 (Clem McCarthy of NBC describes the Knockout)
• Iron-Man Lou Gehrig steps down after twenty-one hundred and thirty games of baseball, July 4, 1939

Band Four

• Elmer Davis announces the Invasion of Poland by Germany, September 3, 1939
• Three Views of US Neutrality: Charles A Lindbergh, Alfred E Smith, Hugh Johnson
• Nazi Blitzkrieg on the Continent; actual march of Storm Troopers, “Seig Heils,” etc., Spring 1940
• Franklin D Roosevelt at Charlottesville, Virginia, “The Hand that Held the Dagger,” June 10, 1940
• Benito Mussolini’s Declaration of War, June 10, 1940

Band Five

• Premier Paul Reynaud pleads for US Aid as Nazis overrun France, June 10, 1940
• French surrender at Compiegne (via German Shortwave Radio) June 22, 1940
• Neville Chamberlain resigns as Prime Minister, May 10, 1940
• Winston Churchill forms a Coalition Government; Excerpts from several of his early speeches, May and June 1940
• Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose speak to evacuated British children

Band Six

• Joseph W Martin, Willkie Notification Ceremony, Elwood, Indiana, August 17, 1940
• Wendell Willkie accepts Republican Nomination, Elwood, August 17, 1940
• Franklin D Roosevelt campaigns for third term: “Martin, Baron and Fish” speech, October 30, 1940
• Winston Churchill reads “Ship of State” message delivered to him from President Roosevelt by Wendell Willkie
• “Arsenal of Democracy,” Franklin D Roosevelt, March 15, 1941
• New York Philharmonic broadcast interrupted for Pearl Harbor announcement, December 7, 1941

Band Seven

• US Declaration of War; Speaker Sam Rayburn introduces President, who asks Congress to declare a State of War, December 8, 1941
• D-Day, June 6, 1944′ Messages on the Invasion by General Dwight D Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle, King Haakon of Norway, and others

Band Eight

• Broadcast from Invasion Flagship Ancon on D-Day by George Hicks of the American Broadcasting Company, June 6, 1944
• Marshall Joseph Stalin on the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution, November 7, 1941
• Franklin D Roosevelt makes his fourth race for the Presidency (”Fala Speech”), September 7, 1944
• Franklin D Roosevelt addresses Joint Session of Congress after his return from Yalta, March 1, 1945

Band Nine

• Announcement of President Roosevelt’s death, April 12, 1945
• Description Roosevelt Funeral Procession, Washington, April 14, 1945 (Arthur Godrey)
• Harry S Truman makes his first appearance as president before a Joint Session of Congress, introduced by Speaker Sam Rayburn, April 16, 1945
• President Truman announces German surrender, May 8, 1945
• Secretary of State Edward Stettinius opens San Francisco Conference of the United Nations, April 25, 1945

Band Ten

• Chaplain William Downey, US Army Air Forces, says a prayer at Tinian, before take-off of the Enola Gay, which carried first atomic bomb used in warfare, August 6, 1945
• President Truman tells of our race for atomic energy and our plans for it, August 9, 1945
• First bulletin of Japanese surrender (Robert Trout), August 14, 1945
• General Douglas McArthur accepts Japanese surrender aboard Battleship Missouri, September 2, 1945
• Epilogue: The thirteen years

In the note included on the back, Murrow and Friendly describe, indirectly, why they released this record: “It has been said that Colonial troops one hundred feet away from Washington at Yorktown missed Cornwallis’ surrender because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. Yet GIs on KP at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, heard MacArthur accept the Japanese surrender faster and clearer than sailors on the superstructure of the battleship Missouri.” His program on CBS was called “Hear It Now” after the title of this record. However, the name of the record, I believe, is the acknowledgment on Murrow and Friendly’s behalf of the power they wield, and the responsibility they carry during strange and transitional times.

This jam rules, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it. I Can Hear It Now is a gem in my record collection.

MP3 :::
Edward Murrow – Band One
Edward Murrow – Band Two
Edward Murrow – Band Three
Edward Murrow – Band Four
Edward Murrow – Band Five
Edward Murrow – Band Six
Edward Murrow – Band Seven
Edward Murrow – Band Eight
Edward Murrow – Band Nine
Edward Murrow – Band Ten

Recession blues yall and I’ve been digging through the personal back catalog to see what I can hock for food.  Apparently nobody buys CDs any more so I’m back to flipping vinyl.  There in the back of the closet I came across a vintage ’80s slab from Dag Nasty which has since gone out of print.  Most are familiar with their Dischord releases – Can I Say and Wig Out and Denkos – but the subsequent release of Field Day had the misfortune of coming out on now defunct Giant Records and is mostly unavailable. 

Haters would say that Field Day marked the onset of Brian Baker’s slow descent into pop metal hell and it’s hard to argue against it when he soon departed for the likes of Junkyard.  It’s definitely a more polished, less aggressive effort and probably more a forerunner of bands like Sunny Day Real Estate or Jawbreaker than it is a natural progression from Wig Out.

But tracks like “Things That Make No Sense” and “Trouble Is” are brilliant in their own right with atypical flourishes like vocal harmonies and a crisp production that belies its DIY origins.  ”Ambulance Song” is arguably an experiment with mixed results and the band clearly lacks the chops to put out a convincing lounge tune.  I’ll chalk it up to that mid-life phase bands go through when self-consciousness overtakes raw passion and they start citing Coltrane as an influence.

Dag Nasty really never got a lot of play even back in their so-called heyday.  Other than a straight-edge ethos, they were decidedly conventional in the midst of an era where The Dead Kennedys were putting out stuff like Frankenchrist and GG Allin was constantly threatening to off himself on stage.  Their musicianship arguably surpassed most of their peers and they were lyrically much more introspective.

Minor Threat still gets most of the glory as hardcore’s poster boys – as evidenced by the fact that tweens are now buying their counterfeit shirts at the mall – but the first three Dag Nasty releases are classics of the second wave and sound as contemporary today as they did 20 years ago.

MP3 :::
Dag Nasty – Trouble Is
Dag Nasty – Things That Make N

Back in the old days when people actually frequented record stores, you’d find the savvy music fan trolling the cut-out bins for those cute little babies thrown out with the bathwater.  For sometimes as little as a buck or two you could take home the major label flotsam which was put out of print and had the case (or sleeve for you purists) unceremoniously marked like some Hester Prynne of rock and roll.  I bring to you here the fruits of my loving labor after countless hours rescuing the cast-offs.

Back in the 1980s Australia was hot.  That Crocodile Dundee guy was everywhere and Olivia Newton John was getting physical in her unitard.  On the music scene, acts like The Church, Nick Cave, The Hoodoo Gurus and The Divinyls were getting equal time on college radio and it was, like, all blowin’ up huge for the Aussies.  Even Tom Cruise had to get his own little piece of Aus by locking up Nicole Kidman.

The Lime Spiders crawled up out of the Sydney scene during the era but had the punk edge of Radio Birdman or The Scientists rather than the poppy frat-friendly lilt of the Go-Betweens.  Steeped in psychedelic influences, the band started out doing covers of hits by groups like The Litter, Cream, The Haunted and The Liberty Bell.  After years of touring, 1987 finally brought the debut full-length release of The Cave Comes Alive. Behind the strength of singles like “My Favourite Room” the album ran up the college charts in the US and prompted typical rock critic categorizations like, “the Sex Pistols on acid.”

The Cave Comes Alive features some standout original tracks like “Rock Star” which mocks the suffering artist schtick with a chorus spun from threads of The Kinks‘ “All Day and All of the Night”.  Classic covers of The Electric Prunes’ “Are You Loving Me More” and The Litters’ “Action Woman” have a newfound urgency leaving behind the laid-back bounciness of the originals in exchange for grit-gargling vocals and windmill power chords.

It’s a solid effort with the cover art alone well worth the purchase. Unfortunately the album is long out of print but most of the cuts are available on the Nine Miles High compilation re-issued by Australia’s Raven Records.  The Spiders haven’t released any new material in well over a decade but have been playing gigs in Australia as recently as last December.  With the appearance of The Stems at last year’s SXSW there may be a revival afoot in the classic Aussie garage bands.  Let’s hope it shakes loose some cobwebs and gets The Spiders back in the limelight.

MP3 :::
Lime Spiders – Action Woman
Lime Spiders – Rock Star