ALABAMA

 

The first non-country concert I saw: STRAY CATS @ Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas. 
The first real punk show I saw: THE DEAD MILKMEN w/BABY M in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 
Perspective is wild, because there were probably less than six years between these two events.

The first record I bought with my own money: CHARLIE DANIELS BAND Million Mile Reflections.
The first cassette I bought with my own money: ALABAMA My Home's In Alabama. 
The first punk tape I acquired: Tough call, but I traded Nikki Jorgensen my copy of BON JOVI's Slippery When Wet for her copy of SUICIDAL TENDENCIES' self titled debut in 1986. 

Notable: 
• Several country concerts pre-dated the benchmark gigs - RONNIE MILSAP, KENNY ROGERS, HOYT AXTON, WILLIE NELSON, DOLLY PARTON and others. Living in Austin had its perks, even though I could have been seeing DICKS and BIG BOYS if I had been a couple of years older. 
• I read a review of HÜSKER DÜ's Flip Your Wig in an issue of Creem that I picked up from the magazine rack in Safeway; it inspired me to shoplift a copy of Candy Apple Grey a few weeks later when I was on an orchestra field trip to Oklahoma City and we went to the mall (because shopping malls were a novel treat to us small/er town kids). Shit blew my mind. 
• My step-cousin visited in 1987 ands saw that I was getting close. She bought me Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death, Never Mind The Bollocks and X's See How We Are and helped me bleach my jean jacket and paint the evil dude from ST's Join The Army on the back. I am eternally grateful, and will always remember how disappointed she was with that X record. 
• Two shows I wish I could revisit now that I know more things: GRIMPLE @ Kelly's Bar & Grill in Norman, Oklahoma (1992 I think) and BORN AGAINST in Cudahay, Wisconsin (1993). They were both milestone gigs, but I was clueless.

Really though...I still am.

THAT FIRST TAPE
My mother cleaned some shit out of my sister's room recently, and handed me a small bundle of tapes that survived the decades. Not quite ready to listen to the tapes of her talking and singing yet, but I was very happy that she held onto the shit from my younger years. I've listened to this tape hundreds of times - but last week I popped this physical copy in a deck for the first time in thirty years was truly special.

DJARABI SONGS

 

A gorgeous collection of upbeat West African love songs from artists that will be new to all but the most studied TE visitors, which is typical for Little Axe compilations. Contributors include WASSOLA FANTA, TATA DIAKITE, MAMOU SIDIBÉ and others, closing with a lament to the Sahel from IMMA BABA COULIBALI. Many things in and of this world are very ugly - these sounds are beautiful. 

DJARABI SONGS

ASPS

 

Sometimes it takes less than ten minutes to make you reconsider. ASPS is the solo embodiment of Andrea Blake (CHROME DOME, VACUUM) and their sole release is a dose of gloriously dark, minimal(ist) Australian synth that will remind the careful listener of WAX IDOLS and TJO. The causal listener will experience dark and deliberate sonic beauty...and isn't that enough?

ASPS

FUN CONTROL

 

I saw FUN CONTROL last weekend in a batting cage in San Francisco and they opened with the first song on this tape....here are the thoughts that I had watching this song live, which correspond perfectly to the thoughts I had listening to the tape for the first time:

HICKEY

CAPITALIST CASUALTIES
Y2K Thrash 

D-CLONE

UNA BESTIA INCONTROLABLE...and then I'm hearing '90s Merge Records shit start the second song before more erratic thrashcore wastes my sorry ass. More songs bring more brilliance and more confusion, because the current crop of San Francisco hardcore bands give no fukkn shits (and that's before we address the "Emptiness" issue - when you listen you'll understand). I haven't even scratched the surface.

TEST RUN

GRASP OF DYNAMITE

 

This is the embodiment of '00s stadium crust never realized......except that it was realized. TRAGEDY and and THE TOTAL END and ZEROID and FALL OF EFRAFA and....GRASP OF DYNAMITE but a decade later. They took the sounds and the energy and made it something else entirely. Something you already know but something you've never felt before...not like this. 

THE ABYSS

FULL MEAT JACKET

 

There's another (relatively well known) release titled My War but goddamn that shit if that shit doesn't escape me because it doesn't sound nearly as fucked up as this shit. FULL MEAT JACKET come off like a real and desperate internal struggle manifested as improvisational noise punk. If mental anguish had a sound, it would be FULL MEAT JACKET. If emotional frustration was a band, it might be FULL MEAT JACKET. If punk lost all pretense....it might sound like My War in 2004 (say it out loud to get the rhyme). 

MY WAR

The label boss says it better than I can, naturally. 

SOLVENT

 

Bombastic, raw Covid-era DBeat from Seattle. Six minutes of insistent distortion drenched urgency punctuated by a 55 second manipulated missive that sounds like you're standing at apocalypse beach watching studded jackets wash up onto the shore. That's how I want the world to end. 

SOLVENT