SHARON TATE'S CHILDREN

Four members in this West German band, and still they couldn't track down a guitarist? What the hell is wrong with people?! Clearly this was an attempt to make something "different," and I grudgingly confess that on most of this demo SHARON TATE'S CHILDREN succeeded. No song titles to share, but bass and organ drive these four tunes and it all lands somewhere between arty late 70s proto punk (only a decade too late) and late 60s heavy psych (only two decades too late). I think that with ordinary keyboards, this would be total crap, but the organ gives it a scary carnival feel and makes the mid tempo dirges seem eerie and off kilter. I could easily imagine this music coming out of a very fashionable and hip scene circa 2010, but we would all find some way to dismiss it, and instead talk about how those new kids can't hold a candle to SHARON TATE'S CHILDREN, then we would pat ourselves on the back for simply knowing who SHARON TATE'S CHILDREN are and revel in the fact that we are more worldly and experienced than those young upstarts and who were those kids fooling thinking they could make music as authentic as the stuff that we like? 

SHARON TATE'S CHILDREN

But seriously, fans of THE VANISHING, THE VSS, CHROMATICS and SUBTONIX might want to check this out, because when put in that context, SHARON TATE'S CHILDREN do indeed sound ahead of their time, even if they did not necessarily weather that time all that well.

BLOODY GEARS

Boston's BLOODY GEARS just do it right. The opening guitar lick could be from a long lost SUPERCHUNK tune, the band comes in and instantly I wish that FUCKED UP were still good, cause when they were good, they sounded like this BLOODY GEARS shit that I'm rocking right now. Add the vocals and I hear MOVING TARGETS (also from Boston, in case you're keeping track) and I was sold before the first song even hit the chorus. There are five songs on this tape, and they all rule - give me the chorus of "Running" over 90% of the shit I hear in any given day. The guitars are in the realm of Stan from ARCTIC FLOWERS/SIGNAL LOST, and the overall feel sits pretty close to the latter, but it's really all about the songs...great fukkn songs, and even better songwriting, something that is pretty rare. The band has their own blog here, and Deranged is releasing an EP from them soon.  

BLOODY GEARS

ABADDON/REJESTRCJA

ABADDON should be well known to my well rounded readers, one of Poland's finest 80s exports blow through six songs on this tape, including a version of "Wet Za Wet" that has almost no discernable guitar...actually, most of the recording is lacking in the guitar department, but I'm not sure if this is a different recording or simply a bad reproduction. REJESTRACJA sound mellower on this practice tape than the recordings that I've heard before, but that voice is chilling even buried in a wash of cymbals. REJESTRACJA's only official appearance was on the 1986 Jak Punk To Punk compilation on released Polish state label Tonpress (ABADDON's "Wet Za Wet" was also featured), and their two songs make it easy to understand why people have been passing around practice and live tapes of this band for 25 years. Five songs here, and though I have no titles, I figure this guy might be able to help us out. This is the flip side to the TZN ZENNA tape posted a couple of weeks back.

ABADDON

REJESTRACJA

Here's a short video from the Jarocin festival in 1982, I'm not sure if the REJESTRACJA performance is more interesting, or the footage of the Eastern Bloc punks putting safety pins through their cheeks. This whole film is well worth checking out, even if your Polish is rusty.

WEIRD TV

WEIRD TV sound like they are from the Pacific Northwest - dirty fuzzed out rock with a snotty singer who sounds equal parts Cobain, Zapata and Crash (Kurt, Mia and Darby, respectively). Aside from the ill-advised version of "Gloria" - a song that is right up there with "Sonic Reducer" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog" on the "Don't Do That" list - these tunes have the perfect mix of grunged out 90s post rock and new millennium art soaked punk. I think that WEIRD TV could easily venture into unpleasant hipster territory on future releases, but for now I stand firmly in their camp. Oh...they're from Olympia, so I guess that Pacific Northwest supposition was pretty spot on.

WEIRD TV

NATTY CHARIOT

End the week with a mellow swagger instead of a raucous explosion. Natty Chariot comes to us from the same chap who put together the excellent Behind The Iron Curtain mix tape posted back in January, and this time, as the subtitle suggests, we get one solid hour of Jamaican reggae/dub singles. The tempo is dreary and dragging throughout, but the vibe is fukkn excellent on tunes like "Natty Dread Come Over" from LITTLE BOP and KING TUBBY & MICHAEL CAMPBELL's spaceland freakout "Internal Energy." The vinyl crackle on the tape's namesake performed by OBSERVER is almost as mesmerizing as the monotonous driving beat and, and I ROY's "Drifter" with it's lazy horns seems positively upbeat by comparison. A few years ago, you never would have convinced me that I would have liked this tape, but it started with my friend Peter and slowly my mind opened. No, it has nothing to do with weed, but Natty Chariot is a burner.

NATTY CHARIOT Side A

NATTY CHARIOT Side B

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL

The folks at the online version of Maximum Rocknroll asked me a few questions, and I answered them. This magazine has been and still remains a huge fucking part of my life, and I'm happy to share the link to their site. Daily updates, killer photos, loads of website/blog links, new bands from around the globe...just another way to better spend your time in front of the computer.

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL

HATEFULS

As Luc (from the sporadic but excellent Kängnäve blog) pointed out a few weeks back, the Ancienne demo that I posted was the likely just the first from HATEFULS ("ancienne" means "older," and that tape was from 1983), and with my vast multilingual repertoire I am going to guess that this demo, seemingly titled Nouvelle, is actually just their "new" one...or at least it was the new one in 1985...and I didn't even finish college. More killer KBD styled punk shits this time, though HATEFULS have mellowed a bit on this three song recording. The combination of "Voodoo" b/w "Too Many Rules" would have made an essential slab of wax, but alas these kids were destined to remain on cassette until some bearded chump converted their lifes' work to 00s and 01s and shared it with you.

HATEFULS 1984/85 demo