APLOGETIC DAWN

 

There are a few Loathed Sound Department tapes I haven't unearthed and I savor them as they (re)surface. I eagerly consumed every release I could when the label was active, each one felt like a deep dive into a world I was (almost always) unfamiliar with. Apologetic Dawn is no different - you know funk and you know soul, but ADAM GRUP's "I Got You" and 6IX will turn your shit on its ear. The hard driving groove of THE STOVALL SISTERS, the silky smooth funk of THE TEMPREES, everything about FUZZY HAWKINS. The whole damn thing - start to finish.

APOLOGETIC DAWN: Music With Movement For The Funk And Soul Deep Inside

1-800-REMIXES

 

If you weren't alive when (most) these songs were unavoidable then mayhaps you can't really grasp what a comfortable listen this is. I was there though - I was high school kid with a weekend job as a small town commercial radio DJ and I heard damn near every one of these tracks countless times. I didn't hear them like this though, and there's a magic in this era-appropriate collection. Until today, I never knew that MC HAMMER name dropped Oaktown in "U Can't Touch This" (which is followed by DIGITAL UNDERGROUND and EN VOGUE, two more outfits that helped put the East Bay on the mainstream map around the same time ECONOCHRIST moved out from Arkansas), and until today I never knew that JANET JACKSON collaborated with HEAVY D on a remix of "Alright." And Canada's JANE CHILD dropped one of the most essential freestyle bangers ever with "I Don't Wanna Fall In Love" and she's basically the arctic Sheila E or some shit. Basically, I learned a lot of things today. MICHEL'LE, ROB BASE, JOHNNY GIL round out a remix tape that was hopefully distributed out of the trunk of a stolen Camry...and could have provided the soundtrack for every episode of In Living Color. 

1-800-REMIXES VOL.1

If anyone has a line on subsequent volumes....you know where to find me. 

POP HYSTERIA

 

Strap in. Aptly named POP HYSTERIA create a space between BLURT and fIREHOSE and they ooze confidence while they occupy that space. It's been quite a long time since I have heard a band pull off a sound this effortlessly, "To Live And Die On The 405" is the most important song you didn't know you needed. 

PAPA STEREO

CANTOS OSCUROS

 

A stunning collection of obscure tracks put together by the folks at Little Axe in Portland, Cantos Oscuros is an hour long journey into a series of other worlds that left me reeling. MARTHA JEAN-CLAUDE, THOMAS MAPFUMO, ARLETA, FALLING STONES, HILDA MURILLO, NORA HERMOSA.....and a few artists the even the creators couldn't identify. Choice cuts for me are the devastatingly mournful cut from OH JHANG-SAN and a subdued screamer from Tacoma, Washington rock 'n rollers THE WAILERS. Sprinkling a few North American rockers (KEN DAVIS, THE JENSEN SISTERS, CARLA OLSON, THE WAILERS) into a mix filled with artists from Indonesia, Suriname, Cambodia, Jamaica, Greece, Japan, Sweden and Zimbabwe helps to contextualize all of the included music instead of presenting any of the songs as exotic anomalies. But really....? It's a fucking beautiful collection of sound, and that's what I'm here for. 

CANTOS OSCUROS

CREEP PLAYER

 

Like many other folks focused primarily on the hardcore and punk adjacent realms, LUKE SICK first popped on my radar through his collaborations with Andrew Nolan (SHANK, COLUMN OF HEAVEN, INTENSIVE CARE) and Dan Bolleri (FUNERAL SHOCK, SPAZZ, TORTURE UNIT), both released by the IRON LUNG folks. But after the seal was broken...shit was over. I spent a fair bit of 2022 devouring the MegaKut catalog and uncovering innumerable links and connections...there's no rational reason that I should give half a shit about the DOUBLE LIFE Revolutions 12" from 1997, but this is what happened and I'm more than OK with it. CREEP PLAYER is Sick with DJ RAW B (of the aforementioned DOUBLE LIFE), Rival Dealer is as undeniably Bay Area as it is undefinably Bay Area - even a novice (and a transplant) like me recognizes the sound and the swagger though I would never try to own or describe either. As this year wraps, I feel like the sounds of CREEP PLAYER are like an invitation to a transition; a visitor from another plane offering you dark passage to a future destination. 

RIVAL DEALER

LUNATIC SOUND DISPLAY

 

Loathed Sound Department forever - every time I listed to one of their tapes I feel just a little more precious about the time I've spent with their releases and just a little more bummed that there (might not) be any more. Lunatic Sound Display is another killer (of course): ANTHONY RED ROSE, SUN RA, FRANCIS THE GREAT, GIRLI GIRL, MATCHEZ, BGM, SPACE INVADERS and more. Primitive hip hop, space funk, jazz, dripped out reggae, kraut soul....shit, even if you download this and only listen to the SPONTANEOUS OVERFLOW track once you are still a winner. Every tape opened more doors, and I'm grateful. 

LUNATIC SOUND DISPLAY: IDIOT SOUND WE CALL LO-FI

HOOPLA!

 

Dorky, quirky, funky and casual, HOOPLA! land somewhere in between DEAD MILKMEN and MINUTEMEN while staying weirder than either, which is all to say that they land just fukkn right. Salted Slug Beer Crimes clocks in well over 40 minutes (it was the '90s, kids) and I don't know shit else about the band. 

SALTED SLUG BEER CRIMES

UNCLE SMOOTH AND THE LOST MAYANS

 

In case you thought the first tape from Waukesha, Wisconsin's UNCLE SMOOTH AND THE LOST MAYANS was something, let me introduce you to their follow up. The weirdest part (to me)....? Listen to "Sledding," and realize that this shit sounds years ahead of its time. 

4...5...9!!!

W.O.O.

File under "not for everyone" if you want to file W.O.O. anywhere, but they don't make bands like this anymore, and they were impossible to classify even when they did. Turn of the decade freak music, but I'm talking about the '80s --> '90s here, when funk permeated seemingly everything and the hardest punks were turning into college art rock grown ups (or maybe they were simply "growing up"). New York City's W.O.O. seem to fit nowhere on either of those spectra. A weird cover of Sinatra's "Boots" makes me wonder what it would sound like it YEAH YEAH YEAHS made the same move 25 years later. "Reno" is a(n almost) psychobilly burner. And those tracks are sandwiched between two doses of IDIOT FLESH style prog/funk, "No Hurry" is pretty weird while "Big Picture" could have found a home on the Homestead roster. I mean, this was happening in NYC while TRAGIC MULATTO were playing shows in SF, so I guess it's not that weird. You just have to listen with 1989 ears instead of 2021 ears...which is probably how you should listen to most things, just to be safe. 

W.O.O.

GIL SCOTT-HERON with BRIAN JACKSON AND THE MIDNIGHT BAND

 

The endless trove of treasures left by the defunct Loathed Sound Department project keeps giving - every time I reach into their box of wonder, I unclench to find a handful of gold. Perhaps you only know "Whitey On The Moon" (and to be clear: you should know "Whitey On The Moon"), but I beg you to dig very deep into the world of Gil Scott-Heron if you haven't already. There's more to hear and know and learn in that world than you can imagine...so you can start today with this 1976 performance before you pull out Pieces Of A Man and Small Talk at 125th & Lennox (which you definitely need to do). 

VILLAGE GATE 1976

ORGASMIC TOILET BAND

 

As far as I can gather, this little box of genius was only available through the classifieds in MRR sometime in the early 1990s. I'm sure that friends of the band had an inside line, but the general public? You just had to be in the know...or willing to gamble. Dug was willing to gamble back then and Dug is eager to share today, and so am I. Which brings us to: ORGASMIC TOILET BAND. Twenty two doses of freak funk, joke punk, noise rock and hardcore schlock - fans of SCHLONG and YOUR MOTHER in particular will want to pay attention, if only to see what you missed. But anyone who misses the parade of oddities that marched boldly through the first half of that lost and mysterious decade will find themselves comfortable here - even while (or perhaps because) their eyes are rolling. Maybe growing all the way up isn't really the best move. 

ORGASMIC TOILET BAND 

UNCLE SMOOTH AND THE LOST MAYANS

 

A few years after hardcore's heyday, in that dark void before the USDIY network had really coalesced and scenes were codified, experimentation was truly allowed, even celebrated...and shit was wild. PRIMUS played 924 Gilman countless times, OFFSPRING and ECONOCHRIST toured together. VICTIMS FAMILY was a punk band. The lines between crossover, thrash, commercial alt rock and punk were extremely blurry, countless bands lived exclusively in those grey areas, and those grey areas were often in the suburbs. Enter UNCLE SMOOTH AND THE LOST MAYANS from Waukesha, Wisconsin. I wasn't there, so I reached out to a few people who lived through it to give me some context....

Dug: "Musical giants of Waukesha, WI!"

Karoline: "Maybe we were all just stupid kids and maybe they were really great and I just didn't appreciate it at the time."

Sweater: "I'd like to revisit them, they were 'too musical' for me then. I never understood the whole Primus thing - now I can kind of understand, but I still don't think it's right."

At times it's not too far removed from the college town punk I was surrounded by at the time. There are some proto-grunge bits a la SLUGFUZLE, while the wild funk/punk of CINDERBISCUITS crashes full speed into late '80s thrash and....and also PRIMUS. These dudes listened to a lot of PRIMUS. I can't imagine making music like this as a teenager, and thinking of UNCLE SMOOTH AND THE LOST MAYANS playing the same Madison basement as ASPIRIN FEAST and BIKINI KILL (not the same show, but still)...well, it was a different time. 

UNCLE SMOOTH AND THE LOST MAYANS

THE GEORGE CLINTON STORY

 

Just as the cover suggests, welcome to The George Clinton Story brought to you by DJ Billy Jam with help from Daddy Dog and Dr. Watt. Academic and/or nerd level analysis and wildly deep cuts, this program as broadcast in the '80s runs just just shy of 70 minutes. 

THE GEORGE CLINTON STORY

You see that what the dominant culture is trying to fake - Clinton is already there. We were trying to get into outer space, he was the extraterrestrial brother. 

LESS IS MORE

I might me stretching my assumptions here, but I don't even know how LESS IS MORE could exist in a 2020 reality. The band featured Myron Isaacs on drums, who was the drummer for ALL YOU CAN EAT when I played bass for that band on one very weird Japanese tour in 1996. We only practiced a few times before we left, and the moment I remember the most clearly from those rehearsals was Myron getting excessively frustrated with me trying to synch up with him on one particular song - "Don't you have any soul at all? This part is supposed to be funky!" - and I was thinking to myself "uhhhh, no, actually, I don't have that kind of soul at all." I probably didn't even know what being "in the pocket" with a drummer meant at the time. But I listen to this 1992 cassette and I get it, I get his frustration. Beach House Memories is a product of time and surrounding - JANE'S ADDICTION, PRIMUS, alt/funk/punk was the sound of the day, slap bass wasn't completely forbidden (yet), and this one holds up far far better than it has any right to because the songs are good and the chops are supreme. Accidental perhaps, but there are guitar/vocal harmonies a la HELMET or MOTHER LOVE BONE and the fellas sing about sweet things like lost love and revered pets and they honestly just sound like some dudes having a really good time jamming together. There's an innocence and an honesty that peeks out from behind the chops, and I'm not really concerned about how many cool points I lose when I say that "Face Off" (which opens the second side) totally slaps. Because...well, it fucking slaps. 

BEACH HOUSE MEMORIES

1. Myron was only Myron in ALL YOU CAN EAT,  he prefers "Seth."

2. I really did not do a good job on that tour, objectively speaking. 

3. The tour was great though...for me. For Seth? Not so much. 

4. I am still not funky at all, and though I have a soul, I do not have soul.