"Always - Love Over Gold" - WHY DID YOU MAKE ME HUMAN? cassette compilation (Mississippi Records)

The continuing saga of a modest little record store in Portland, Oregon and the consistent stream of audio goodness that bears their imprint/mark of quality is one of the best and least expected fruits of being a music fan in the here and now. WHY DID YOU MAKE ME HUMAN? is volume 43 in Mississippi Records’ homemade compilation tape series, and it presents a fine selection of “Doo-Wop, R & B and early Rock” (as scrawled on the packaging), much of it (at least to these ears) sweetly obscure. The ultimate objective of these cassettes (and the MP3s of their contents that are currently traversing the internet’s reliable circuitry) is quality and not rarity however, so the track-list does include some well known names: Bo Diddley’s riotous and celebratory call and response groove-mining (“Africa Speaks”), Ike & Tina Turner’s molten hip-swinging ferocity (“I Idolize You”), The Shirelles’ tough and sweet gal-group largeness (“Doomsday”), The Coasters’ typically zonked and wise-assed R & B (“Little Egypt”) and Sam Cooke’s eternally gorgeous soul rendering (“Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”) all make superb appearances. There are also a slew of names that are noteworthy if far less canonical, and that’s where some of this comp’s finest tracks are located. Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters are best known for the formidable hit “Cry Baby” (later covered by Janis Joplin), but “A Quiet Place” should’ve been just as big. It lands squarely between late period vocal group richness and the then (1964) burgeoning Cooke-inspired soul construction, and it contrasts well with the blunt gush of The Falcons’ (who hit big with “You’re So Fine” in 1959) “I Got a Feeling”, which uses a roughly similar blueprint toward a goal that’s far more concerned with raw stomping and shouting. The Ad-libs are best known for “The Boy From New York City”, but their non-hit 1966 A-side “Human” (which queries this compilation’s title) is an amazing piece of A cappella Doo-Wop that’s cumulative effect is just jaw-dropping. The Edsels’ of “Rama Lama Ding Dong” fame conjure a nice bit of vocal group loopiness with “I Was Born in Mexico”, and Barbara George, best known for “I Know (You Don’t Love Me No More)” (#1 R & B/#3 Pop in ’61) fronts a slightly eccentric but inviting slice of vintage New Orleans junk. Considering the quality of all of the above, it’s still the obscurities that carry this gem up the stairs to the level of exceptional. The Twistin’ Kings were actually Motown’s legendary house band aka The Funk Brothers, and “Congo Twist (Part 2)” is a very curious and uncommonly inspired attempt at dance craze cash in, radiating very much like a piano led soul-jazz session that’s mutinied by a rogue gang of hired percussionists, the scalawags derailing and rerouting the atmosphere into territory very much about strong coffee and lush exotica. Quite beyond Chubby Checker, baby. But The Delcos’ might just steal this whole show with “Arabia”, which is a whole lot like a rougher, less streamlined version of The Four Seasons contractually obliging a cameo in some nameless rough and tumble exploito-teen cinema. I kind of imagine the scene a little like this: A bunch of absconding harem girls stow away on a cruise ship and accidentally drink copious amounts of a kooky scientists’ powerful love-elixir. They proceed to invade the ships swinging and unsuspecting discotheque, where Valli and Co are holding court with a particularly smoking band. Rhythmic mayhem ensues. If “Arabia” is destined to be my personal tiptop of the cuts offered here, there is still plenty more fine quality stuff located amongst the 23 tracks, and while most of it leans toward vocal group eloquence either A cappella (The Casanovas, The Hudsons) or with accompaniment (The Jive Bombers, The Revells), it also has a nice helping of additional R & B in store (Tarheel Slim & Little Ann, Pearl Jones). But it’s the two truly spiffy Rockabilly excursions that really stand out (but make total sense) in this milieu. The Musical Linn Twins “Indian Rock” is dripping with that spastic hiccupping frenzy as perfected by crazy Caucasians in the second half of the ‘50s and Benny Joy’s warped excursion into sauced lounge weirdness is a direct antecedent to one of Tav Falco’s many facets. The entirety of this cassette is an ideal example of wise, inspired assemblage, and as such is so much more than just cool. It’s loaded from end to end and back again with pure life affirmation, the stuff that serves like a hand-me-down hickory stick to beat off the bugaboos, scourges and downers of modern life. And while the actual cassette copies of this have probably all found loving homes, I’ll again stress that MP3s are out there for the finding. Playing them might lead you to momentarily mistake yr IPod for a transistor radio, and cool THAT most certainly is.

The planet just got a little less interesting

RIP Harvey Pekar

Ten from the '90s Part Six (1995): The Blue Humans- INCANDESCENCE CD (Shock)

INCANDESCENCE was released in 1995 on writer and Skullflower guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn’s Shock label, and it documents a particularly noteworthy and vital trio formation of guitarist Rudolph Grey’s post-No Wave/improv-rock outfit, featuring legendary and late jazz drummer Beaver Harris and longstanding skronk-noise-agitator Jim Sauter from New York’s notorious behemoth sax/guitar trio Borbetomagus, recorded live at CBGB in an opening slot for Sonic Youth in 1988. Music recorded in the ‘80s and released in the ‘90s to be (hopefully) savored until the end of all time. Blue Humans (along with Grey’s solo work) has been generally uncelebrated within the wide-open range of the post-’77 underground, even though he’s collaborated with a bunch of major names, outsider jazz giant Arthur Doyle and top-notch experimentalist Alan Licht among them. If Grey’s name rings a bell for many it’s in relation to his exceptional oral biography of sui generis American filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. And yeah, that’s one whopper of a book. Grey’s strength as a purveyor of molten improvisational scorch is a whole other basket of steaming bagels, though. Without explicit debts, Blue Humans launch from the same pad that hosted the ecstatic eruptions of late era-John Coltrane. But where lots of artists more deeply connected to jazz tradition became (maybe at times too) concerned with relating /continuing the spiritual element of ‘Tranes’ late sound, Pharaoh Sanders springing to mind first and foremost, Grey’s various groups start with the glorious sonic extremity inherent to LIVE IN SEATTLE or OM and jump with calibrated intensity into a new territory that falls between out-(noise) rock and unapologetically full-on improvisational scorch without ever feeling like a studied attempt at fusion style grafting, ultimately registering as far more organic and intuitive than either Last Exit or the unjustly neglected SST act Universal Congress Of (as great as both of those bands certainly were, and more on UCO later). Of course, Grey’s No Wave roots are a big part of the picture. His late ‘70s band Red Transistor is one of the key lost groups of the genre (one essential 7” posthumously released on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label), and Blue Humans can be looked upon as the template for the sort of aggressive and extended non-commercialism that No Wave really should have developed into. This very brief CD is evidence of the quite frequent gestures toward unbridled creativity that occurred during this era of supposed horrid conformity (the ‘80s only sucked for people who didn’t look or couldn’t find hep sounds), and I feel safe in surmising that at least one person that unknowingly stumbled in front of the exquisite explosiveness of this trio had their life permanently altered for the better. Sauter’s delivery here is looser and more identifiably jazz-like than his deliberately pummeling attack in Borbetomagus and Harris’ drumming throws aside any explicit ties to jazz tradition, instead opting for an explosive and rock-aligned forward motion (still abstract as all hell) that shows how deeply simpatico he is with Grey’s sensibility. That sensibility, in something close to a nutshell, is a free flowing yet thick and abrasive mass of sound surely influenced by but ultimately not classifiable as jazz. The music here, even with its roots in Coltrane (and Albert Ayler), owes far more to Jimi Hendrix at his most sonically extreme. Most casual listeners might miss this since Hendrix was nearly always somehow connected to song forms and Grey most assuredly is stridently the opposite, his work often feeling instead like one of Jimi’s typically great solos turned inside out and reshaped into something seemingly new yet secretly familiar, or possibly like a brief segment of The Experience at their most outré being looped, examined and expanded like a mind-bendingly beautiful Technicolor balloon. There are certainly still ties to the assaultive core sensibility of No Wave and also to free jazz, but Blue Humans were simply born of the former and borrowed from the latter. And just like it would be a huge fallacy to categorize AXIS: BOLD AS LOVE as a blues record, to call INCANDESCENCE late period No Wave or contempo free jazz is just as largely off the mark. Instead, this document is a core example of one of the rarest of forms: Free Rock. Now, one thing INCANDESCENCE does share with free jazz is the harsh fact that it is best experienced in the live context. To quote the great master Eric Dolphy: “When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again”. The recordings of improvisational, cathartically abstract expression have always been attempts to capture the incendiary essence of this wide-ranging and inexhaustible form, and even the greatest examples have ultimately failed to grasp the sheer life-altering power of witnessing the sweat roll from the brow of a player while standing in the midst of a cloud of collective creative abandon. INCANDESCENCE does a damn fine job trying to harness the force of the fervor, though. It’ll never match being there, but it can make being wherever the hell you are infinitely more interesting. And that’s the whole point, I think.

Grey with sax master Arthur Doyle and Beaver Harris

Wordy, unruly and dissonant: Saccharine Trust- PAGAN ICONS LP (SST 006)

Saccharine Trust’s first album is probably destined to be ever-slept on. It’s certainly identifiable as punk rock circa 1981, though there are either too many or not enough odd, quirky, arty elements integrated into the brief running time of PAGAN ICONS (I consider it an LP, some call it an EP, I think we’re both right) to work up the posthumous froth of a fan base. For many, they will be considered too weird to fit the now codified definition of what punk rock is supposed to sound like. But for others, the Trust will be too committed to the rock tradition, even at this early point, to really qualify under their terms as groundbreaking or vital. They weren’t an “anti”-group like Flipper in form or The Nig-Heist in content, and while assuredly lyrically thought provoking also lacked the aggressive antagonism inherent to many of their peers (label mates Black Flag for one example). Folks could and have called Jack Brewer’s words pretentious and his voice obnoxious, but rest assured I’d never be that uncouth. Brewer’s real function at this early stage is to serve as an effective vocal counterweight to guitarist Joe Baiza’s already distinctive style. Syllables and chords intertwine into a heaving, throttling atonalistic mass that when aided by the functional but worthy rhythm section of Earl Liberty (bass) and Bob Holtzman (drums) forms a vicious and dark whole. Brewer’s throat is so loose and slippery that it essentially eschews the sorta big group sing-alongs that have aided a lot of now canonical punk action, plus the lyrics avoid the kind of chanting brevity or blatant sloganeering that was quite frequent by this point. “I Am Right” is a tightly wound and well executed exception (while subversively serving as a smart taunt toward self-righteousness, punk and otherwise), featuring a group-growled chorus melded to some tightly coiled chug and clang (it was later covered very well by Sonic Youth), and “We Don’t Need Freedom” does edge up against the caustic protest punk that was starting to gain traction in the dawn of the hardcore era, though the thorny ponderousness of the subject matter is much larger and interesting than the so often simplistic political platitudes expressed by a stinky busload of punk “radicals”. This true non-conformist quality is quite an important aspect of their sound and identifies Saccharine Trust not as outsiders searching for the safety of a marginalized peer group (which is what much of the punk movement [any movement for that matter] actually was, and there is not a bit of shame in that) but instead as committed iconoclasts stoked by the thrilling tension and release (i.e. the power) of musical expression. Of course the Trust did find their hail fellows in the SST/New Alliance scene, where they became an integral piece of that network’s puzzling jigsaw. This fine record zips by in a flash of amped up density, with the five minutes of its closing cut “A Human Certainty” making it quite clear that Baiza and Brewer were heading outward from any kind of orthodoxy. Joe wails through a snarling mess of string mulch while simultaneously presiding over a stressed groove, and Jack steps up and matches him with the bruised and bombastic testifying of a wounded soul. This is the track that appeared on THE BLASTING CONCEPT compilation LP and served as my introduction to Saccharine Trust. ICONS fell into my lap almost immediately after that, and at first “A Human Certainty” stuck out like an aching digit from the other seven tracks on the record. 1-7 were hyper-spazzy out-punk, ragged and surly and comely, but 8 felt to me like a sweaty and unstable deconstruction of something I was much more familiar with at my then young age, that being blues based hard rock. This was in no way a boneheaded punk-era piss take, however. It was instead a signifier of deeper rock knowledge that lined these guys up with not only their SST label mates Minutemen and St. Vitus, but also Cali-contemporaries like Dream Syndicate, X and Flesheaters. This sense of history helped Saccharine Trust avoid even a fleeting flirt with faceless generics, and they continued to evolve, underappreciated but unbowed. These days, PAGAN ICONS truly feels like a well formed whole. Its energy and intelligence are undiminished, and if you’re at all interested in the SST saga, this isn’t a footnote, it’s an essential component.

Ten from the '90s Part Five (1993): Unrest- PERFECT TEETH CD (Teen Beat/4AD)

Unrest’s development from smart and arty ‘80s post-HC upstarts into arguably the best guitar-pop trio of the ‘90s was a fascinating thing to hear as it happened. I can’t brag that I was there from the very beginning mind you, but I wasn’t that far behind, doing mail-order from Mark E. Robinson’s Teen Beat label when a large portion of that imprint’s discography was homemade cassette releases. And in my opinion there is a plurality of approaches into the vast worthiness of the band’s legacy: maybe the easiest way is to engage with their existence in two parts. The first found Robinson and drummer Phil Krauth interacting with a progression of third members (Tim Moran, Chris Thomson, Dave Park, Justin Chearno) in a sustained attempt at romancing a mind-bogglingly diverse assemblage of influences into something roughly approximating a focused aesthetic. That they were so successful at this unruly endeavor gets more impressive as time slouches forward. UK prog, Kiss covers, Kenneth Anger, shards of DC-post hardcore, choppy acoustic wrangling, unusual but surefooted instrumental passages, sincere post-punk appropriation and flashes of unadulterated pop brilliance all combined to somehow sound downright logical. Any of the band’s early recordings showcase this sonic coup to fine effect, though MALCOLM X PARK is probably the best example. The culmination of this first part saw the band undergo a subtle refinement that avoided downplaying their wide ranging nature, with KUSTOM KARNAL BLAXPLOITATION evidencing this shift. And that was cool, but where do you go from there? In Unrest’s case, you move on to the second part of their lifespan, often called the “Bridget Cross-era”. Cross had already made some serious waves as a member of Velocity Girl, contributing in a very key manner to that DC-area group’s outstanding debut 7” before bailing and hooking up with Robinson and Krauth in 1990. Her contribution to Unrest was immediately felt as they kicked out a couple of classic short players, “Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl” and “Cherry Cherry”. Listening to both it was plainly clear that further refinement was taking place. Specifically, deep attention was now being paid to the post-punk and guitar pop elements in the band’s arsenal, and they quickly attained an overt yet non-slavish Anglo-ist minimalism that was equal parts arty and catchy. At times insanely catchy. IMPERIAL F.F.R.R. is often thought of as the go-to release for this era of the band, since it solidified them as a main attraction of the ‘90s indie heyday (Spin Magazine articles and all that). And it is a masterful record, but as much as I’m smitten with that one (and smitten I most assuredly am) I rank their final album PERFECT TEETH as both my sentimental favorite (by a nose) and this incarnation of Unrest’s qualitative high note. It’s the release that hits the perfect synthesis of their late fixations and is also a monument to how deep study of musical precedent can meld with imaginative inspiration to reward the listener with a profoundly personal collective voice. It opens with a nice passage of guitar and vocal fragility from Bridget and Mark (“Angel I’ll Walk You Home”) before exploding into the precise pop heaviness of “Cath Carroll”. You may recognize that name as belonging to a certain Factory Records artist of notable cult renown (she was in Miaow, one of the best late ‘80s Factory groups). Deliberate hommage was a major element in the Unrest (and Teen Beat) attack, often visually (that’s Cath’s striking image gracing PERFECT TEETH’s cover above). They titled another tune “Winona Ryder”, penned “Isabel” in tribute to painter Isabel Bishop and named an early cassette LISA CAROL FREMONT (identify the reference and make this middle-aged auteurist happy). This practice surely gives off a nice post-Godardian whiff, something they share with fellow DC resident Ian Svenonius. The song celebrating this particular Brit-pop muse is just brimming with elements that basically define late-period Unrest; guitars hyperactive and chiming (with occasional helpings of judicious distortion), vocals soaring and joyous (when they weren’t magnetically melancholic), drumming complex and forceful (yet wildly, indefatigably direct in a manner that’s kinda post-Motorik). The tune gallops, it freefalls, it explodes, it repeats. And repeats. Sweet and glorious. From there the record moves into Mark’s mid-tempo jangle comfort zone (“So Sick”), finds Bridget conjuring a very UK rainy day-ish spirited mopery (“Light Command”), lands on one of Mark’s alternate-universe karaoke belters (“Soon It Is Going To Rain”), and sees Phil sing (and drum) a pretty and picturesque love ditty, the kind of tune that’d sound flat-out euphoric on headphones from an airplane seat while traveling to reengage the warm embrace of a lover long missed (“West Coast Love Affair”). Yeah, there is also some Tommy Tutone if he recorded for Sarah Records tomfoolery from Mark (“Six Layer Cake”), and Bridget’s closer has the sort of bold bass playing and airy downtrodden vox that screams out Rough Trade circa 1980 (“Stylistic Ampersand”). The centerpiece of the whole disc though is “Make Out Club”, which sounds like some dastardly rouge cooked down the choppy jangle-rifics of the early Wedding Present, sucked it up in a big-assed cartoon syringe and shot it into a throbbing mainline that leads to a furiously beating heart muscle energized not by blood (no way) but by the myriad and eternal beauties of love (sorry Scientists). If you’ve ever passionately kissed someone in a field on a blanket in late spring until it felt like you had just exchanged tongues, you’ll understand the greatness of this song. If you haven’t, it’ll make you want to. Please proceed.