"Bury Me Next to Robert Palmer"

(This isn't the cover art, it's what comes up when you search for it.)

Alright, so... way back in the first post on this lumbering, somnambulistic, half-rotten and stinking blog, I told you about my lust for Apocalypse Hoboken's music. Then, a short time later, I had the delightfully twisted, handsome, and well endowed singer of that band come by and share some thoughts with us. Todd Pot is many things. At least eight if you hear him tell it. Well, my dear, neglected little blog trolls: I'm half aroused when I tell you that there's more. As was mentioned before, Todd keeps pretty fucking busy in the world of music. Amongst his many projects that are currently playing and recording, there exists a fucking slice of key lime heavenly hair pie called The House That Gloria Vanderbilt. You'll forgive me if I'm brief, but let me just tell you that you're going to love this band. Exactly from the first track in. I don't know exactly what genre you expect me to pigeon-hole them into, and I'm not gonna try. Instead, I'll leave you with this metaphor: The House That Gloria Vanderbilt are the voluptuous swollen breasts of Lilith, as she methodically brings you to orgasm whilst you die, smothered. Buy their stuff on iTunes. Or, just contact Todd, he's a sweetheart, and he'll probably let you have it for free, you fucking peasant. Here's "Heavy Like A Feather."

Bonus video!


Get Stunted (DL)

"There's room on the stick shift for you, doll."

This is the first thing I ever heard from the cum and coke fueled madmen that are the Dwarves. Practically an institution in the punk rock underground at this point, the Dwarves have been polluting the world with filthy ditties about teenage girls, dope, and destruction since the mid eighties. I don't know if any of these versions have since been re-released, but this is around the time of the Toolin' for a Warm Teabag LP and Blood, Guts, and Pussy. I'm not usually into the egomaniacal, "I'm a fucking rock star and I only want your money/drugs/pussy" attitude, but at least these guys have always been honest. No pretense, just scum. You'll probably want a shower after listening to this one.

I'd Eat You To Survive (DL)

Bonus! Here's an interview from a Bay Area free trade rag called Juice. I'm not sure of the year, but it's around the release of Come Clean (2000).

Skate Fast! Thrash Fast!

Useless Wooden Toys hail from Mpls, MN. and play some raging, duel vocal hardcore thrash/smith grind about skating, moshing, and not taking shit so damn seriously all the fucking time. Disrobe are from Chicago. They share members with the Rat Bastards, and sound fairly similar, only faster. I'm just not in the mood for a proper write-up at the moment, so just DL this already.

DAGGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (DL)

(Sadly, Chris Johnson, one of the vocalists from UWT was killed one year and a week ago today at a party by some rotten piece of shit. Even though I didn't know him that well, I can honestly say that this was a tremendous loss. My heart goes out to Ryan, Steve, Cookie, and Chris. Thanks for playing in my basement way back when, and I hope you guys continue to skate and thrash with a fervor as yet unknown.)

"Just, look at all those disgusting trees!"

I posted an album by The Rat Bastards before, maybe you got it. Today, I'm posting a rip of the "Contaminated Minds" - 7inch, complete with painstakingly put together scans of the bile green, multi-panel, fold-out cover. These tracks are a bit more raw than the later material, and I gotta say that this was the 7" that really got me hooked on this band. Just perfect, angry, bitter hardcore punk rock from Illinois. As a bonus, I have one extra, one-sided, version of the fold out poster insert (11"X16"). If you want it, tell me something interesting in the comments section. Whoever has the most interesting comment(judged by me, of course - and assuming anyone tries) will, within a couple weeks, receive said poster in the mail. Along with some other bits of worthless junk and ephemera I deem unsentimental enough to part with. Free swag, you dirty scum. Always remember that I will never, ever, always love you.

"I'll take that fucking swastika, and shove it up your ass!"(DL)

[Mediafire gave me an "invalid file" error, so I re-upped and changed the link 5/31/09.]

[Also Re-upped the older Rat Bastards post. 06/06/09]

Kill him. Fucking kill him. Kill him already... Kill him.

I'm terribly sorry. I've been sick/lazy/apathetic/uninterested. I even considered quitting this blogging business for a minute. But, I'm going to go ahead and keep chugging along. Why not, right? I'll try and get back onto a more consistent program. Here we go...

Oh, Steve Albini, when will you be content? In a way, I guess I hope the answer is never. I love your curmudgeonly ways. Always railing against the illogical approach of the mainstream music industry dick blisters. I hope you keep making uniquely menacing, heavy, abrasive music. Like, Shellac's 1000 Hurts (2000). Like being pleasantly raped by your stereo, this album is plenty full of rythmic pounding, grunting, and static. Try this: download this album, play it really loud at your crappy job, and punch yourself in the face. You'll feel awesome.

onethousandhertz

New Feature!

I've always thought it would cool to have an interview feature on the blog, and now there is. I'm going to try and get a hold of some people I admire, being musicians, writers, artists, skaters, or whatever, and have them answer a few simple questions. In fact, I'm asking them the simplest journalistic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? And, How? I'm leaving it up to the subject to decide how they want to answer. Some people will probably give us the most basic answers, others may rant, and others may take an entirely different path. The point is, these are creative people, and I want that to shine through. Personally, I find most interviews to be a little boring, because the questions are always the same. I'm hoping that by providing these questions, in their naked, most Basic form, the subjects will be able to express themselves without constraint. Who knows if it will work, but I'm looking forward to the results.

Our first guest is Todd Pot, of one of my all time favorite bands, Apocalypse Hoboken. If you're unaware of this band, I highly recommend you go back to my first post and check them out. Todd's got a totally unique voice, and his lyrics are an art on their own. Here is his interview:


Who .....What .....When.....Where.....Why.....and How..............first things first. I hate doing interviews. Back when Hoboken was in full swing I was the first to curl up in the fetal position and fey sleep when it came to interview time in the back of the van, some crappy bar, or some dudes shitty living room next to his shitty record collection, smack dab next to the shitty litter box that I was to surely curl up next to and try to get a couple hours of shitty shut eye......I was about seven years old when my uncle had given me two cassette tapes: "Computer World" by Kraftwerk and "Wild Planet" by the B-52s. Both of these albums shaped how I felt about music. There was more to music then the stuff that I heard on the radio.......four years would go by and that's when things really started to change... skateboarding made it's way to the Midwest... Nash and Variflex were the only decks we had to choose from, unless you went the mail-order route......I chose the latter. What came with skating was the marriage of music......skate rock......MRR.....Flipside.....Suburban Voice....and a slew of bedroom zines .......I was a sucker for American punk and heavy metal.........i never got on the whole Sex Pistols or Ramones kick....I could give a fuck about dressing a certain way ...I truly just dug the music......so years of stuffing my ears with as much as I could went by.....lots of drugs....lots of pussy.....and more drugs....my favorite local band was a band called Apocalypse Hoboken.......I tried to see them as much as possible, which was an easy feat. During 1987 to 1992 the band played what seemed like every weekend.....during that time the punk scene in Chicago and suburbs was a full fledge scene.....your usual gaggle of misfits and miscreants made up the scene and shit was cool.....I graduated highschool in 1991, floated around for two years, and stumbled upon a flier in a record store called The Turntable. Not only did The Turntable supply us with our records, but the kind owners supplied half the northwest suburbs with weed ....if you were lucky enough to be cool with the owner's son he would pull out his Trapper Keeper of Damned and Psychic TV photos......the whole Manchester thing was really big at the time, so this dude was all up in that shit, ya know Stone Roses ...Primal Scream...Loop.....you get the picture, and I digress....the flier that caught my eye "APOCALYPSE HOBOKEN is looking for a singer"......I tried out with a handful of lyrics and a gutfull of want, and for fuck's sake I became the singer!
The band tried hard to make a dent.....Fireside Bowl was in full swing....Elgin and the Third Floor was wiping the suburbs ass ...shit was good. Hoboken set out from the get go to be different than the bullshit Fat....Doctorstrange.....Epitaph shit that oozed through Chicago....Naked Raygun was another curse. I dont like Chicago styled anything ...keep it outta my music.........our need to be different only alienated us even further......the band toured a great deal, we signed to a horrible label out of California called Kung Fu, run by horrible people that play in now horrible bands......we were stuck and pigeonholed.....made it to Europe with a band called the Ataris, another fart in a dixie cup band.......had a blast though.....went out with At The Drive-In and Murder City Devils which proved to be a complete kick in the nuts....they don't like to share cocaine. Our best tour was with The Candy Snatchers - we finally found comrades!!!! needless to say Apocalypse Hoboken ran its course. Personal strife and band bullshit inevitability tore us apart....it was a good run though!!! Now to today.....I'm kept busy with a plethora of bands:
The House That Gloria Vanderbilt ...... Tongues....Vicelords......Jewsteeth......He-man.....and the occasional Apocalypse Hoboken reunion for all those "Chicago style hot-dogs" write me if ya want @ penistubes@yahoo.com xoxotpot

Todd also asked me to link you guys to God's Balls Records and Litter Box Studio, and so I did. Thank you Todd, for taking time to answer The Basics.

Get out of your chairs. Stop playing your little pool games.

Do you like Anal Cunt? You do? Shit, I'm sorry. I mean, I guess they can be kind of funny. But wouldn't it be awesome if they had way more talent, and Seth wasn't a racist fuck (I base this racist accusation purely on rumor and speculation, because wikipedia is always right). Well, if you've ever felt like that, I have got a blowjob of a grindcore album for you. 7000 Dying Rats is mostly a recording project, involving a great number of people from a great many bands. According to the sheet that came with the record, 24 people are in the band. The only members I know of as being full time are Tony Vast-Binder and Steve Rathbone. The rest are a revolving door of contributors. While I have the vinyl, I don't have the ability to post it here at this time, so you're getting the CD version. The 12" has 17 tracks, the CD has "99", though tracks 35-98 are bogus. Unfortunately, I can't find track #99 on my computer, sorry. If anyone has it, and they want to send it my way, I'll fix it. It seems like they have alternate versions between the two formats, as well. Personally, I like the vinyl, but I guess you're getting twice as many tracks this way. I'm not real big on grind. In my opinion, there's just not enough originality and skill involved. But these guys actually have quite a bit of technical prowess, and there's enough anachronisms in their style on this album to keep things very interesting. Tracks jump between genres like a cheap hooker jumps between johns. Grind, punk, jazz, country, funk, ambient techno, noise and more. I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the grindcore scene, so the closest comparison I can make is Crom. There's a bit of info about them on their myspace here but it looks like their website disappeared in the last couple of months. Like most great albums, it sounds best about one decibel above the pain threshold of the human ear. Thanks to the Pope for helping me find a copy of the Derek Hess cover art. Until next time...


DLLink

Eat Shit, You Pop Punk Wankers!

In the early to mid-nineties there was a backlash happening in the punk scene. Green Day released "Dookie", Rancid put mohawks and leather jackets into the malls of middle America, and the marketing strategists even convinced a whole lotta kids that the Offspring were a punk rock band. Next thing you know, everyone's got a label. The underground music scene became a battle ground. Groups of kids that used to hang out and go to shows together, were divided into factions. We weren't just 'punks' anymore. Now we had to be Straight-Edge kids, or Crusties, or Skins, or Skate Punx. Girls on the cheerleading squad were wearing Screeching Weasel shirts. Guys who played football were asking how they could spike their hair. Fights broke out at the Gilman, and bands were being banned, because of the new P.C. attitude. It was weird, but some good things came out of it. When the popular kids suddenly wanted to be my friend, I got to go to their parties and steal their stuff. You could bum a cigarette from anyone. It seemed like you could get away with more, maybe it's just me looking at my teenage years with rose colored beer goggles.



So, today, I'm going to post an album by one of my favorite bands to have emerged from all of that mess: the Rat Bastards. After hearing their "Contaminated Minds" 7", I wrote their guitar player, Jay Perris, to try and find more of their material. We wrote a couple letters back and forth, and I sent him a few bucks for another 7". A few weeks passed, and I hadn't seen anything in the mail from him. I started getting pissed. How could this guy rip me off for five bucks? Didn't he know that I could get a twelver of Weideman's with that cash? But, at the peak of my temper tantrum, a box arrived from Chicago. Inside was a grip of shwag: A t-shirt, several sheets of uncut stickers, a couple of patches, two 7"s, and an apology letter. I felt like an ass, but I was stoked to get all this stuff. A few years later, I even got to see them play a basement show in MPLS, and it was so fucking rad! Long story, but my point is: the Rat Bastards shred, and Jay is a super nice guy. I checked their myspace, and it looks like they broke up a while back, but still do reunions once in a while. In the meantime, check out this full length from Beer City Records. And since you've got all this free time, go check out beercity.com, who just had their 13th anniversary.



Children? They're Monsters! (DL)

We got violence!

I 'discovered' punk rock when I was eight years old. I had been skating for a couple years already, and if you recall, board graphics were pretty much uniform in design. Skulls, skulls, and more skulls. (Check out Sean Clivers' book, "Disposable" for the insider's history of skateboard graphics, it rules). My first deck was a Powell Peralta, Mike McGill, with the VCJ skull and snake. Well, actually, my first board was an Alva, which I stole from some kid down the street, and spray painted/stenciled a Batman logo on. (Sorry, Jesse Goodyear). But, the first board I got at a shop was the McGill. Point being, my family soon realized that anytime they were obligated to buy anything for me, it only needed to have a skull on it, and I would think it was 'radical'. My mom had a similar affinity for morbid imagery, and had bought herself a Misfits - "Die, Die, my Darling" Tee. Which I received as a hand-me-down in '88. Curious as to what the Misfits were all about, I bought the "Legacy of Brutality" cassette. It was awesome! A few years would pass, and I would pick up a couple of other punk tapes, as well as the usual crap that's marketed to kids. Yeah, I had the "Can't Touch This" single. Yup, I liked Vanilla Ice. Uh-huh, I wanted to be in the Beastie Boys.



By '94, though, I had restricted my musical tastes to Punk and Metal. Mostly the former, as I learned that if I liked the latter, I couldn't be "punk". Headbangers, Dirtheads, and Hessians were to be ridiculed, and if your hair was past your chin, you couldn't be in the Maximum RNR-Fun time-Circle of Punx. It would be a long time before I realized what a load of shit I was falling for, but little kids are dumb, and eager to fit in. Even if it means trying your hardest not to fit in. So, yeah, 1994. I discovered Mail-Order. There was a catalog from Subterranean Records, out of San Francisco, and they had everything punk/thrash/HC/surf under the sun. I ordered about six records the first time. One of them remains a favorite to this day: Apocalypse Hoboken's "Jerk Lessons", 10".

If you don't know, Apocalypse Hoboken were from Chicago, and apparently played about a million shows at the Fireside Bowl. Me, I missed all of them. I was here, on the left coast, never venturing east of the Rockies. They released a handful of albums, and a bunch of E.P.'s and 7"s. Many of the singles and E.P.'s were collected on CD, and they released a four-disc box set in 2004, in a limited quantity, only available through the band. Oh, how I have tried to track down that box set. The thing is, I have never met anyone who has heard of this band. Not in person. I don't think they really had any fanbase outside of Illinois. Why? Beats me, because I fucking love these guys. Perhaps its due to Todd Pot's love 'em, or hate 'em, snotty vocals. Maybe it's because they took some chances, and expanded their sound throughout the years. Maybe it's just that people like me haven't tried hard enough to spread the word. I've chosen to post the "Now Is Not a Good Time", 10". Why? Because no one else has. Finding this album is damn near impossible. It's not my favorite release (that would be "Easy Instructions For Complex Machinery"), but it does have one of my all-time favorite songs, "You're Momma's a Time-Bomb". Enjoy it, because if you don't, I don't think we can be friends anymore.




"She's a woman now, and its breaking my heart" [re-upped 06/10/10]