Danse Around the Corn of the Macabre (request)

A long flirtation with British post-punk brought me in contact with many a thing. I had promised to share more postpunk on here, but I fear my interest in the genre is fading. Nonetheless, if I was still as fervent a postpunker as I had been just a year ago, these here albums are ones I'd want to share. The Danse Society was one of the first "Gothic Rock" bands. I guess that means they are somewhat "dark" and are associated with those zombie looking people that people call Goths but when I was in High School we called "Wavers." Hard to believe that. Did any other school except my middle school and high school have "wavers"?

I guess this has roots in Bauhaus, but I don't really know much about Bauhaus. I don't really like Bauhaus. (Saying that can still get you killed in Denver.) When I finally went on my punk journey (well into my college years) Joy Division was my dark punk band of choice, and still is.

{The Jesus and Mary Chain, not Bauhaus, Joy Division, nor The Danse Society}
Yet there's some good stuff on these albums. I especially like the opening track on Seduction. Who knows, I might love it again in a few months/years/decades! For an update on the sound, be sure and check out the UK band The Horrors.

Mediafire is weird. The albums are in zip files within a folder called "The Danse Society." If I had my shit together I could probably make it easier for you.

http://www.mediafire.com/?j09f84t93wv6b

Well, here, I give it to you on megaup too for fun.

HERE


Now, if you will excuse me. Back to my Black Sabbath albums.

Incurable

There's a lot of retro-nostalgia(?) these days for the 80s. Most of the contributors of this blog grew up during the 80s. And guess what!??! It WAS awesome. We just didn't know it at the time. It was a bunch of shitty pre-adolescent sexual frustration and Republican yuppies. And Michael Jackson was big. Except he sucked then. But now he's cool. I guess. I don't know. The first CDs I bought were in the early 90s. Some Cure, some Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Front 242. There's some Cure I can listen to. They have some great singles, Just Like Heaven, Love Cats and what have you. I obsessed over Disintegration when I was a teen. I still like the titular track, but really it's teeny-bopper shit.

For the real Cure, you got to go to Echo and the Bunnymen. Or as an alternative, The Sound, an enduring obsession of mine. The mastermind behind The Sound was a man named Adrian Borland, and succumbed to crippling schizo-depression in 1999 and committed suicide.

My parents always made fun of me when I listened to my Cure records--"Why is that guy in so much pain?" Well, ma, dad, it's an act. For all I know Robert Smith might be the most depressed man alive. But there is a much more profound quiet pain in The Sound. It is post-punk stripped of most of the glam/punk-kid affectations. Quite in the same genius vein of label mates Echo and the Bunnymen--but less cinematic and much more introspective.

And unlike the Bunnymen, The Sound never had a hit single. The first couple of albums are incredibly, Ian Curtis-inspired, austere and dark (and I love them QED.) They were urged to write more accessible tunes; they certainly were capable of it. Listen to "One Thousand Reasons."--a song Bobby Smith could have written--if he had any decency. (And I guess his indecency is his appeal.) But The Sound didn't sell-out their sound. They released another barely commercially viable album Thunder Up and then broke up. I guess Borland had minor success in the Nederlands and released a number of solo albums (which I'm processing now--seems to be excellent stuff). So it wasn't all for naught. Except he killed himself.

I'm giving you some of my most well-worn mp3s: the mid-period 1985 EPs Shock of Daylight / Heads and Hearts.

So, the sound of The Sound: Dark post punk. But not goofy gothic. (Though I like 80s gothic--don't get me wrong.) This mid-period stuff has quite a lot instrumental movement going on it; but on songs like "Longest Days" all the parts mesh like a smooth ticking, bitter-sweet alarm clock. The bass sound is amazing. The guitar sounds great. The keyboards sound great. Hell, even the saxophone sounds great. Enough talk. Time for the delicious pop-pain of The Sound!

ICI.

{Side note, trying rapidshare. Let me know if this is a problem.}


Post Script: I think some of the details of the history are wrong. All Fall Down was the album that Borland wrote in response to his label's request to make more accessible tunes. The EPs here are after all that. I don't know. Go here and figure it out with me.

Nevermind the Buzzcocks, Here comes Howard DeVoto

This one is a no-brainer, but must be included in the first of my post-punk posts. Granted, I've done post punk posts before, but this time it's for reals.

This just isn't any old post punk offering. This is probably the first record where someone from an actual, established punk band (The Buzzcocks, of course) parted ways with his former bandmates to form a band inspired by the clean slate of punk. Hence the "Post," hence the "Punk." Whatever.

I'm watching Conan O' Brien on the TV right now. I'm going to cry. I watched a lot of TV in college, and Conan was one of the TV things I watched. Also M.A.S.H. and also the shows on Cartoon Network. I also read a lot of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

Anyway, sweet meltmaster, you may ask, what makes a post-punk band? Or, more precisely, sweet meltmaster, what makes a definitive, genre-founding post-punk band?

Well, punk attitude. Which Howard Devoto has in spades. The Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP is the most listenable of nascent, definitive brit-punk statements. The Buzzcocks were awesome after DeVoto, but hardly any punk band released anything as raw, snotty, and brilliant as Spiral Scratch. DeVoto brings that to Magazine, his new band. And then some cool piano and synthesizers. And the guitars are still there. And that makes post-punk, sweet meltmaster!!!

There were plenty of other forward-thinking bands. Pere Ubu was basically already making post-punk albums before the Ramones toured the UK. (Proto-post-punk, I guess we could say.) Other touchstones would be the some of the glamrock such as the first Roxy Music album, the first Eno album, Bowie etc; and previously maybe 13th floor Elevators and other psychedelic explorers who weren't so much as hippie as hip before their time. Anyhow, I always like to out-snob punk snobs by saying that "Punk" died in 1977 when Johnny Rotten quit the Pistols at the end of their US tour in California. Mainly because it did, mostly. But DeVoto started Magazine in what year HUH?!?!?!?! 1977? And it sounds light years away from Orgasm Addict!!!!

From this:


To this:

link!


Oh yes, all of the other Magazine albums are really good too.

ZenTrout News Radio, Episode 1: No more blues/The audio you are about to enjoy is extremely hot

Hello! Today I am launching meltmaster's patented ZenTrout News Radio. This is my imaginary radio station, and I wish that you join me there! A strictly eclectic selection of the predictable and not-so-predictable. An hour of quality music. Expected post-punk and new-wave, New Zealand droning, fuzz guitar country (gleaned from the WFMU blog), and some other sweet-and-sour tidbits. I have provided both a .zip of the individual audio files as well as a streaming podcast version on my meltmaster "Raw from Selection" podomatic account. You can listen here (as well as to past episodes):

ZenTrout News Radio, Episode 1: ZenTrout News Radio, Epis...

Raw From Selection

or download here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/iydmmmunemi/ZTN RADIO 1.zip

Playlist:

1. ZTN Radio Bumper
2. 4 out of 5 Doctors - Anna with Antennae
3. The Church - Happy Hunting Ground
4. Last Man in Europe - A Certain Bridge
5. John Cale - Hanky Panky Nohow (Drone Mix)
6. 5'NIZZA (?) - Anthem of the Soviet Union (1977)
7. Carl Butler - Wonder Drug
8. Charlie Louvin - Cash on the Barrelhead
9. David Kilgour - Time to Run
10. Jose Carreras - Vesti La Giubba- Pagliacci, Leoncavallo
11. Roy Montgomery - Kafka was Correct
12. Roy Montgomery - The Small Sleeper (For Jack)
13. Anita Bryant - Six Boys and Seven Girls
14. Eyeless in Gaza - The Eyes of Beautiful Losers
15. Mary Jane Girls - All Night Long
16. Link Wray and his Ray Men - Missing Link
17. The Maori Hi-Five - Goody Goody
18. Josh White - No More Blues

Crossposted at ZenTrout News, home of meltmaster

Watch Us Fall

Great gloomy 80s psych. Definitely a glam crash, not the pop Bunnymen of the mid-to-late 80s, nor the crisp post-punk Bunnymen of Crocodiles, this is a twitchier, sobbier, drunker and stoneder collection of dour imagery, full of late-night collapses and horror flashes, a world in which all that was ever good in the world is lost forever and nothing that remains is worth saving. (Which is more or less how I remember most of the 1980s, actually). The band sounds driven, though, and the songs are beautiful.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2oygjjujywn/Echo & The Bunnymen- Heaven Up Here.zip

Cuddly Toys, formerly "Raped."

The story of (Irish!) Cuddly Toys just seems to get stranger and stranger the more you look into it. They formed originally as the punk band, "Raped," in 1977. (Although some would argue that since they didn't form in 1976 or before, they weren't a real punk band.) They changed the name to "Cuddly Toys" shortly thereafter, for obvious reasons (presaging Steve Albini's similarly ill-fated band "Rapeman" by several years.) Their first EP was "Pretty Paedophiles." Ahem. It seems like just another band crassly, cynically, reprehensibly seeking publicity. Which would make sense, given the climate of those early punk years. But nevermind: somehow their first hit, "Madmen," was penned by none other than both David Bowie and Marc Bolan. I don't know the story behind this collab, but it's pretty remarkable. (The poster of the youtube video apocryphally states that the band found old bootlegs of unfinished T. Rex and Bowie songs.) Marc Bolan died shortly thereafter. The band friendly-ed up its image with glam gloss and a stellar groove with the release of this album "Guillotine Theatre." (Honesly, I don't know if "Pretty Paedophiles" by "Raped" is available--I'm afraid to look for it.)

Anyhow, the musical result is pretty interesting; they represent a nexus of some past and present major preoccupations of mine in guitar/rock built music: Punk Rock, Glam Rock, and the post-punk thereafter. They sound like a punk rock band with a serious glam influence. Not surprising. Glam had a huge influence on early punk--see New York Dolls--(which was mostly stripped, to its detriment, IMO, in hardcore.) The influences don't quite gel, and the move past punk isn't as paradigm-shifting as it is in Devoto's Magazine. But Cuddly Toys deserve a place in the post-punk pantheon, and also will provide a good springboard for future post-punk posts on punk on this blog.

There's more Diamond Dog Bowie in this than anything else. The Marc Bolan influence is there too...I have to say I can't really listen to whole albums of Marc Bolan. I certainly love a T. Rex song sprinkled in a mix here and there. And there's probably lots of bands that are much better than Cuddly Toys. I'll have to post the ones I know in the future, such as Virgin Prunes, The Sound, Sad Lovers and Giants, UK Decay, Danse Society, Wolfgang Press, Teardrop, not to mention some Brazilian and Svensk shit I got. (And Ero hinted at some Bunny-action.) But this is a good place to start. I feel good about it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?hnmmn5fkefj

RAPED? It's a raped-based economy.


Who are YOUR favorite post-punk bands? Marilyn Roxie has a kick-ass list here.

Song #30,084 that has been stuck in my head

Here is a great reason why nobody hates the Pretenders: Glam, Post-punk, Classic, New Wave...It's all there:



And in case you don't already have a huge crush on Chrissie Hynde:

Eyeless in Gaza, Caught in Flux: Sweet White-man Bloooze

EYELESS IN GAZA - Caught in Flux
I was going to post some soul-cracking Chinese blues I bought in Beijing, but I'm struggling with encoding mp3s on my mac--so that'll have to wait, man. [The question remains: Can my gentle ears distinguish between crappy itunes encoding and .wav and .flac and 320kbs mp3s? Can yours? Sometimes I think I can. Some mp3s sound really crappy, but that's usually because they've been encoded and re-encoded since napster alpha. If you go on demonoid, almost everything is on .flac now. Sometimes I swear I can tell the difference; I'm listening to some sweet-ass Captain Beefheart madness and it just sings in my ears and I say to my self: "Self: that's lossless .flac, aren't it now?" And then I check my foobar player (in my office at work, where I'm at now) and nope! It's not .flac, it's .mp3! FAIL! ahahahahahaha (I will never say "FAIL" on a blog ever again.)]

When I'm perusing music blogs I always skip all of this prattle and just click on the download link. GIMME FREE MUSIC!

But first I want to thank erroneous for letting me posting on his this cool exclusive blog. Everyone should download everything Ero posts because his taste is amazing; he's shown me whole new worlds of music.

For my first offering I bring you Eyeless in Gaza. A recent discovery of mine. I've listened to everything they've done now, and I can't tell you my favorite album. But this one is a contender. I was listening to it this morning and I said to my self: "Self: That's it! That's what I'm going to share on Ero's blog!" It's just obscure enough, just dark enough, just sweet enough, just weird enough. It's just right. I'm on a HUGE 80s post-punk kick right now. And Eyeless in Gaza is one of the kickiest. They are two guys who are excellent musicians and songwriters blah blah blah. Don't have much percussion, just howlin' white wolves and guitar effects. I don't care, I just really dig their music. The singer is somewhere between Howard DeVeto and Joe Strummer--but he's singing in the post-apocalyptic desert wilderness--post punk-popcalypse then (the 80s). A genius stationed on Arrakis or Tattoine has nothing to do but record plaintive dirgey melodies into his four-track. A deranged R4unit adds some digital burps. Although the production is really good so the genius was discovered by production maven Obi-wan Kenobi. Or so I heard.

In two parts cause its 320kbs (Don't have a heart attack it will work on your strong stinking iPhone.)


http://www.mediafire.com/?n2wltojmmdi


http://www.mediafire.com/?2cf2wmdzl3j


PS: Like many things on this covert blog, this is still available for purchase. Thus, after you listen to this and come to the correct conclusion that this is some of the baddest ass sweetness you've heard this side of Bowie's Low you will promptly delete these files off your harddrive and purchase the album.

PPS: I believe this is the dude who plays guitar on this album. Or at least the effects: (Bossk pedals)


PPPS: I don't know anything about blues. Or, rather, everything I know about it I've learned from Ero and a substitute music teacher in High School Jazz Band class once. I learned there were 12 bars involved. I wish I had that jam session on tape. (Man, you can fake Jazz; but there's no faking the blues, eh? Daddio? You with it?)

PPPPS: Viva post-punk post-scripts!