V04-T14 Love Comes In Spurts

.....Supposedly, later this year will see an official DVD release of the Sonic Youth/Nirvana tour documentary "1991:The Year Punk Broke". I was kind of shocked that it's not available already, as I can remember the impact it had on younger music fans when they were between the high of discovering NEVERMIND and the low of hearing about Cobain's death. Sonic Youth fans are still waiting (perhaps forever) for a home video version in any format of "Put Blood In The Music", the excellent documentary on the New York music scene prior to the tour, a large chunk of which is devoted to Sonic Youth.

.....Since Richard Hell doesn't do much in the way of performance anymore, the recent bit of news took me back to one of the last musical projects he did that garnered significant press outside New York. Right after "1991: The Year Punk Broke" hit theaters in 1992, Hell and Sonic Youth collaborated as Dim Stars for an album and single. He's recorded bits since then, but his musical efforts seem more like a hobby next to his writing these days. Today's selection, by contrast, was one of the first (if not the first) of his recordings.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 14

• 02:05 "LOVE COMES IN SPURTS" (Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell)
• performed by The Neon Boys
• original source: 7" EP Shake SHK 101 (US) 1980 (previously unreleased 1973 demo)
• and my source: VALP SHAKE TO DATE Albion SHAKE1 (UK?)1981

.....I only know Albion as a British label (hence the name), but to be honest there's no nation of origin anywhere on the jacket or label. The Neon Boys were Tom (Miller) Verlaine , Richard (Meyers) Hell and drummer Billy Ficca. They would later add guitarist Richard Lloyd and rename themselves Television, shortly after that replacing Hell with bassist Fred Smith. By 1979 Television had released two studio albums on Elektra without Hell, who had released his own LP BLANK GENERATION on Sire. The Shake label was a New York based operation. In 1980 they released a split EP with both bands being Richard Hell endeavors. One side had two of the six known recordings by The Neon Boys. The other side had two unreleased Voidoids songs. All four tracks made it onto the label sampler SHAKE TO DATE, whose liner notes alluded to a second Richard Hell album they intended to release. That must have meant the flawed DESTINY STREET, eventually released on Red Star in 1982 and which Hell years later rerecorded.

.....At the time I compiled this tape I knew Hell had rerecorded "LOVE COMES IN SPURTS" with the Heartbreakers and again with the Voidoids. Looking over my original notes, I can't see much more in the way of discrete facts such as that and what I've included in the paragraph above. There are some personal observations that might be worth your time.

....."This is one of those songs that keep showing up in rock literature, yet more people have heard of it than heard it. Odd, since there are several recordings of it..."

.....Also, "I picked this track for the compilation mostly for its historical value (it sure wasn't for sound quality) and because I never met a pun I didn't like. Also, this and Patti Smith's PISS FACTORY represent the New York scene that followed Warhol's Factory, with the New York Dolls being the link between the two." All I could add to that is that Wayne County was the most likely link between Warhol and the New York Dolls. The link between the Dolls and the rest was more direct, although if I had to wedge someone between them as an aesthetic exercise... I don't know, Genya Ravan, maybe?

.....In the next post, the puns continue. This time they're across the Atlantic.

Hüsker Dü "...Means 'Do You Remember?'"

.....Happy Record Store Day! Vinyl has been making a bit of a comeback in recent years and no one has been more surprised than the retailers who sell it. In retrospect it makes a perverse kind of sense that a generation who grew up downloading music for free would be mystified that there is a format out there that isn't even capable of supporting anti-copying encryption. Not only that, but there's tons-- literally tons-- of back catalog being sold by the pound in thrift stores and yard sales all over the world. It hardly matters that it can't be transported if you can transfer it to an iPod or other device. In fact, if you're accustomed to listening to the AM radio-like flatness of an MP3 signal, then the old bugaboo of surface noise is probably a non-issue as well.

.....This blog started about a month after last year's Record Store Day, so I never really referenced it. I didn't want to just pass it by, even though the blog is about a series of cassettes that weren't compiled for retail purposes. The fact is, many of the songs I've blogged about (and will continue to, trust me) made their way onto the tapes because I could only find them on vinyl (or flexis) and wanted to make them more portable and accessible. Record stores, including those that sold used (well, especially those that sold used), were an irreplaceable source for those. Finding new music you might like is infinitely easier if you can spot a familiar name in the liner notes or jacket credits while browsing in a store. Electronic sources often don't include liner notes and those that do only reveal them after loading times which, no matter how powerful your computer is, can't compare to the ease of holding something and flipping it over.

.....So, how to celebrate records with just one day's blog? Well, I could always renew my call to reissue the Giorno Poetry Systems catalog on CD. There's fewer than 100 vinyl titles total, maybe no more than 60 or 70, yet less than a dozen have made it to CD. Because their excellent anthologies always contained otherwise unavailable recordings by both famous and obscure artists, I routinely consulted my sparse collection of GPS titles when planning a career retrospective tape or looking for some kind of change of pace track for a 'various artists' tape. If reconfigured, the entire label might fit on 40 CD's, and many of them could be devoted to single artists. There are some musicians who have larger catalogs than that just by themselves (Zappa and Bowie come to mind). Many more artists only appeared sparingly. Some had recording commitments elsewhere, some generally worked in other media. One of the many bigger names to make a rare visit was Hüsker Dü.

.....Warner Brothers is issuing a special "Side By Side" vinyl single for Record Store Day that will pair Green Day's last-decade cover of "DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF YOU ARE LONELY" with the Hüsker Dü original on it's silver anniversary. My hair turned a little more silver when I heard that one. Since Green Day probably has fans who weren't born when that song came out, maybe I should share a crash course on Hüsker Dü in the form of a compilation program. It could be timely; Bob Mould just appeared in a Foo Fighters documentary in which he's seen contributing vocals to the recording of their recently released album. They've been hitting the talk show circuit pretty aggressively, so it's not impossible that Bob's name and his old band might pop up. Weirdly, the FF's appeared on the Daily Show without dropping his name (Mould wrote and performed the familiar Daily Show theme music). I'm not certain when I put this compilation together, but I can confirm that it was after the last of the "So, What Kind..." cassettes. (For what it's worth, the previously posted Cramps compilation was probably put together at the time I was finishing the tape with Volumes 3 and 4.) I'll put it at ten years ago. So, gather all the spiky-haired grandkids around, here we go...

.....For the uninitiated, Hüsker Dü was three people:

• [M]= Bob Mould: Guitar and vocals
• [N]= Greg Norton: Bass and vocals
• [H]= Grant Hart: Drums and vocals

.....I'll use those initials for songwriting credits. Anyone unfamiliar with my format notation will find a helpful key at the bottom of the page. My apologies to anyone using automated translating software to read this, since my use of abbreviations might confuse the software. I can only suggest first reading this verbiage in your own language, then reverting the page to English so that the notation will remain unaltered. The compilation was made with two 90-minute cassettes. I'm going to precede each track with an alpha-numeric. If this compilation had ever been pressed on vinyl, the letter would represent the 'side' and the number would represent the track. Every two vinyl 'sides' complete one side of the cassettes. After listing the programs, I'll suggest configurations for CD formats.

....."Everyone Is An Authority"

• [A01] 01:57 DO YOU REMEMBER? (M)
• .....demo recorded live by Bill Bruce in a St. Paul Basement, 1980
• [A02] 04:54 AMUSEMENT (M)
• .....B-side 7" Reflex [no#] Recorded live by Terry Katzman at Duffy's, Minneapolis, October 1980
• [A03] 04:33 STATUES (H)
• .....A-side 7" Reflex [no#] Recorded at Blackberry Way, Minneapolis, 1980
• [A04] 01:53 LET'S GO DIE (N)
• .....outtake from "Statues" sessions
• [A05] 02:02 ALL TENSED UP (M/N/H)
• [A06] 00:54 GUNS AT MY SCHOOL (M/N/H)
• [A07] 01:50 DO THE BEE (M/N/H)
• .....from mini-LP "Land Speed Record" New Alliance Records NAR007 (US?) 1981
• [A08] 02:52 IN A FREE LAND (M)
• [A09] 01:15 WHAT DO I WANT? (H)
• [A10] 01:11 M.I.C. (M)
• .....7" New Alliance Records NAR010 (US) 05/82
• [B01] 01:40 FROM THE GUT (M/N)
• [B02] 02:14 EVERYTHING FALLS APART (M)
• [B03] 01:42 TARGET (M)
• [B04] 00:30 PUNCH DRUNK (M)
• [B05] 01:24 AFRAID OF BEING WRONG (M)
• .....from mini-LP "Everything Falls Apart" Reflex [no#] (US) 01/83
• [B06] 02:25 REAL WORLD (M)
• [B07] 04:40 DIANE (H)
• .....from EP "Metal Circus" SST Records SST020 (US) 12/83
• [B08] 01:59 WON'T CHANGE (?)
• .....an outtake from the "Metal Circus" sessions, recorded 01/83
• .....from VALP "A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse" Giorno Poetry Systems GPS035 (US/C) 1985
• [B09] 03:56 EIGHT MILES HIGH (Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby)
• [B10] 02:54 MASOCHISM WORLD (H/M)
• .....7" SST Records SST025 (US) 04/84

....."All The Ways Of Communicating"

• [C01] 00:47 ONE STEP AT A TIME (M/H)
• [C02] 03:58 WHATEVER (M)
• [C03] 04:27 WHAT'S GOING ON? (H)
• .....demos recorded Summer 1983
• [C04] 01:24 GRANTED (?)
• [C05] 02:08 SOME KIND OF FUN (?)
• [C06] 03:12 DOZEN BEATS ELEVEN (?)
• .....outtakes prior to "Zen Arcade" Sessions, recorded Fall 1983
• [C07] 01:41 NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN (H)
• [C08] 02:03 THE BIGGEST LIE (M)
• [C09] 02:32 SOMEWHERE (M/H)
• [D01] 00:54 MONDAY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME (M)
• [D02] 02:43 PINK TURNS TO BLUE (H)
• [D03] 04:28 TURN ON THE NEWS (H)
• .....from 2LP "Zen Arcade" SST Records SST027 (US) 07/84
• [D04] 04:03 CELEBRATED SUMMER (M)
• [D05] 03:05 THE GIRL WHO LIVES ON HEAVEN HILL (H)
• [D06] 02:48 BOOKS ABOUT UFO'S (H)
• [D07] 02:08 IF I TOLD YOU (H/M)
• [D08] 02:34 NEW DAY RISING (M/Hüsker Dü)
• .....from LP "New Day Rising" SST Records SST031 (US) 01/85
• [D09] 01:40 ERASE TODAY (?)
• .....outtake from the "New Day Rising" sessions, recorded 07/84
• .....from VALP "The Blasting Concept Vol. II" SST Records SST043 (US) 1986

....."All This We've Done For You"

• [E01] 05:06 HELTER SKELTER (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
• .....recorded live at 1st Ave., Minneapolis on 01/30/85
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [E02] 02:42 MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL (M)
• [E03] 01:46 LOVE IS ALL AROUND (Sonny Curtis)
• .....7" SST Records SST051 (US) 08/86
• [E04] 03:03 FLEXIBLE FLYER (H)
• [E05] 02:46 HATE PAPER DOLL (M)
• [E06] 02:36 FLIP YOUR WIG (M)
• .....from LP "Flip Your Wig" SST Records SST055 (US) 09/85
• [E07] 02:43 TICKET TO RIDE (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
• .....recorded live at 1st Ave., Minneapolis on 01/30/85
• .....from VA7"EP "NME's Big Four" NME GIV3 (UK) 02/86
• [E08] 03:29 DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF YOU ARE LONELY (H)
• .....A-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [F01] 08:24 ALL WORK AND NO PLAY (M)
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [F02] 06:07 HARDLY GETTING OVER IT (M)
• .....from LP "Candy Apple Grey" Warner Bros. 9 25385-1 (US) 03/86
• [F03] 04:27 SORRY SOMEHOW (H)
• [F04] 03:09 ALL THIS I'VE DONE FOR YOU (M)
• .....7" Warner Bros. W8612 (UK) 09/86

....."Coming Back For The Sake Of Retrieving"

• [G01] 02:39 COULD YOU BE THE ONE? (M)
• .....A-side 12" Warner Bros. W8456T (UK) 01/87
• [G02] 01:28 [track A2, introduces members and double LP]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [G03] 02:47 EVERYTIME (N)
• [G04] 03:13 CHARITY, CHASTITY, PRUDENCE & HOPE (H)
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. W8456T (UK) 01/87
• [G05] 03:20 FRIEND, YOU'VE GOT TO FALL (M)
• [G06] 03:33 SHE FLOATED AWAY (H)
• .....from 2LP "Warehouse: Songs And Stories" Warner Bros. 9 25544-1 (US) 01/87
• [G07] 01:25 [track D5, losing your mind on tour]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [G08] 04:22 ICE COLD ICE (M)
• .....A-side 7" Warner Bros. W8276 (UK) 06/87
• [H01] 02:34 [track B1, regarding printed lyrics]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [H02] 08:51 HARE KRSNA (H/M/N)
• .....from promo-only compilation CD "Do You Remember?" Warner Bros. PRO-CD 6853 (US) 1994
• [H03] 02:47 AIN'T NO WATER IN THE WELL (M)
• [H04] 02:11 IT'S NOT FUNNY ANYMORE (H)
• [H05] 03:22 NOW THAT YOU KNOW ME (H)
• [H06] 02:25 BACK FROM SOMEWHERE (H)
• .....from CD "The Living End" Warner Bros. 9 45582-2 (US) 04/94
• [H07] 01:30 [track C2, assessing your own work]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987

.....There are no songwriting credits for the interview segments, obviously. For more information on the band, I recommend the link on the right side of the screen. Now, that's a proper discography.

.....Earlier I promised recommended CD configurations for those of you playing at home. Here they are:

1. CD1: Use tracks A(all), B(all) and C01-C06
2. CD2: Use tracks C07-C09, D(all), E(all) and F01
3. CD3: Use tracks F02-F04, G(all) and H(all)

.....Most of the singles can be found on the albums. There should have been a comprehensive boxed set for the group years ago, but due to their catalog being almost evenly split between SST and Warner Bros., that's not likely to happen in my lifetime. What should be made available is a CD collecting all the Warner Bros. non-album tracks. I think some of those songs have never been released in their native U.S., let alone on disc. 90% of what's here should be readily available with a little hunting, though.

V04-T05 I'm A Potato

.....My original notes on this spiraled off into a rambling diatribe about De-evolution, evolution, the Church of the Sub-Genius and the Industrial Revolution. I'm going to spare you that and stick to the track in question.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 5

• 02:38 "I'M A POTATO" (Bob Casale, Gerald V. Casale)
• performed by Devo
• original source: demo, recorded 1976 [possibly self-pressed single?]
• and my source: CD HARDCORE VOL. 1 1974-1977 RYKOdisc RCD 10188 (US) 1990

.....It may be debated for years whether Devo merely predicted the 1980's or actually caused them. Considering the number and scope of forces at work, I'm inclined to say 'predicted' but their theories of De-evolution seemed to be a blueprint for everything from the Reagan presidency to the Islamic revolution in Iran. Simplification, even over-simplification, became a rallying cry for people who could no longer bear the increasingly impossible burden of respecting others. Well, impossible for them, apparently.

.....The parallels to Ronald Reagan can sometimes be particularly chilling. Before he had the advantage of Peggy Noonan providing an articulate filter for his "the world was how I imagined it as a child" outlook, Reagan often wrote his own speeches in 1960's California. For his gubernatorial inauguration he wrote: "For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers-- but there are no easy ones." At no point does he assert that the simple answers would work, you understand, only that the mere fact that they are simple is in itself a virtue and an end in itself. For Reagan, the point was never to solve the problem. The point was always to adhere to the principle. If you get your way, you win, regardless of the consequences of getting your way. The principle is never subjected to testing. The principle is never subjected to analysis. The principle is the only standard. Simple, simple, simple.

.....Devo never fell into the trap of believing that evolution is progress. The word "progress" implies moving forward, which further implies that there is an understood consensus on which direction is "forward". The truth is that 'evolution' is just the name that we slap on whatever process (and it's usually a process of elimination) that got us from where/what we were to where/what we are. It is not a process that moves toward a goal, it is really just a reaction to conditions as they are. Conditions change, and chances of survival with respect to this or that ability or trait change with them. It has long been a human conceit that whatever we happen to be right now is the pinnacle to which anyone might aspire. Devo have spent decades wryly turning that arrogance on its head by isolating those parts of our culture and civilization that are characteristically contemporary and sarcastically chiding us about the "wonderful world we live in; a beautiful, magic place". Reagan was a textbook example of the dangers of indulging that kind of fuzzy sentimentality. While most us grow up to lose some aspect of innocence and learn that the world is not entirely wonderful, it is usually not necessary to sit each of us down and explain to us that when we were children that the adults in our lives shielded us from many of the worlds more depressing aspects. That's the sort of thing most of us work out for ourselves when it becomes our turn to care for someone much younger and helpless, someone at the mercy of a world that can hurt them and scare them with very little effort. When we need to placate their anxieties we try to tell them only what we assume they can digest at their age. They can deal with more later. It makes us more forgiving of those who soft-peddled the world's evils to us when we were that age. The problem with Reagan is that he behaved, and certainly spoke, as though he thought that the world genuinely was the way it was presented to him as a child. He once said, incredibly, that labor strikes were unheard of when he was a kid and certainly not as violent as they had become in the 1970's and 1980's. Even more incredibly, no one in news media challenged that clearly false statement, probably because Reagan said it, as he said everything, with absolute conviction.

.....The point here is that Reagan was one of many raised to believe that humanity and more specifically western civilization in his youth were the pinnacle. When the world changed, when it proved unable to remain stagnant and dead for decades, he could only conclude that something had gone wrong. It was inconceivable to him that many of these changes were improvements over conditions of which he was unaware and that many more were never changes at all. He hadn't learned as many of us had that the world had not always been how we were led to believe it was and that the changes it undergoes aren't good or bad but merely developments to be dealt with. In "I'M A POTATO" we have Devo painting a nostalgic picture of what most people would consider a nightmare of chromosomal damage and failed elective surgery. The music sounds like an enthusiastic march (again, the illusion of progress, of moving 'toward' something) with electric guitars imitating a trumpet fanfare. It would take virtually no effort at all to write arrangements for high school marching bands to play at football games. All of which is to celebrate being a 'potato', a recurring image and metaphor in many of their songs. The potato actually has more genetic material than a human (48 chromosomes to our 46) with much of that information devoted to storing energy. Recorded in 1976,supposedly the year that the phrase "couch potato" was coined, this demo is already anticipating a time when over-simplification will be lionized as the epitome of human development. The potato becomes the ideal model for the future of human evolution. We would become big featureless inert sponges, soaking up information or some other unit of value and retaining it as long as possible, just as potatoes retain heat energy. What Devo is telling us is that this can be viewed as a problem to prevent or a paradigm to embrace. What is not as obvious is that our current evolutionary status can also be viewed that way. If we don't occasionally step back from ourselves and look objectively at what we are we may never realize that we are the mongoloids happily devolving and embracing ourselves as not only the best that we can be but the best that can be, as Reagan did. Devo painted that picture of mutant dystopia to warn us, but a decade later it seemed that the picture was adopted as a blueprint.