Art for Spastics v. 147

To DOWNLOAD this program, CLICK HERE (archived for 10 weeks).

To STREAM this show before September 13, GO HERE.

BROTHER LOVE & HIS FAR OUT SPACE NUTS // Opium // Every Garden Grows One // New World of Sound 1993
ETERNAL TAPESTRY // New Dawn // Vibrations cassette // Not Not Fun *new
EDGAR BROUGHTON BAND // Evil // Wasa Wasa // Harvest 1969
UNNATURAL HELPERS // Earwax // Earwax 7" // Dirty Knobby *new
ANNIHILATION TIME // Reality? // Cosmic Unconsciousness 7" // Tank Crimes *new
BE BAD // Rat Race // Vision Correction // Divorce *new
RUPTURE // I'm Insane // Get Fucked, Cunt 7" // Incognito 1996

LAMPS // Axis Sally // self-titled LP // In the Red *new
TERRIBLE TWOS // Outdoors // A+A 7" // Big Neck *new
FONTANA // You're Obscene // I Feel Like a Jerk 7" // X! Records *new
DIGGER & THE PUSSYCATS // Suce Moi la Bite // split 10" w/ The Magnetix // Everyday's a Saturday Night *new
YOKOHAMA HOOKS // James Yer Out // split 7" w/ Flip Tops // Iron Goat *new
DIGITAL DINOSAURS // Fingers & Thumbs // v/a: Messthetics #103 // Hyped2Death 2007 (orig 1978)
DAN MELCHIOR UND DAS MENACE // The Pink Scream & the Middle Manager // The Pink Scream 12" EP // Shake Appeal *new

BLANK DOGS // My House Is Red // Diana (The Herald) 12" EP // Sacred Bones *new
MATTRESS // Mirror // In Your Pocket 7" // Malt Duck *new
LEADERS // Powervibes // Synthesizer Sketchez CDR // no label *new
JAM MIX // tracks 1-9 // CDR // no label *new
HUMAN HOST // The Realm // The Halloween Tree // Fall/Terra Firma *new
MERCURY 4°F // The Slow Process of Self Decay // Tinnitus 7" // Death by Blow Job 1995
FUZZ UNLIMITED // Florida Tags // Take a Hit // MT6 *new
ARTHUR BROWN'S KINGDOM COME // Time Captives // Journey // Passport 1973
CHRIS BROWN // Sonar Vacation // Master Switch Electroacoustic Music 1978-81 // no label 1998
RUSSIAN TSARLAG // Bleach Party // cassingle // Greentape *new
MLDRS // untitled // Yob Dur Paft CDR // no label *new
PUSSYGUTT // West (Creature) // Sea of Sand 2xLP // Olde English Spelling Bee *new




This week we begin with the best song from Brother Love's first record, a one-sided 12" of killer kiwi psych that begins with an authentic breezy West Coast '67 vibe but gradually coalesces into something heavier. We heard the first half of this last week, but I had to fade it out due to time constraints. By request, it's leading off so that you can enjoy it in its entirety. While his name has remained fairly obscure, Brother Love championed on throughout the 90s with the help of His Far Out Space Nuts and into the 2000s with the Free Association, and he's back to being solo, with a new album in each of the last two years. Reportedly, he's gone into a more C&W direction.

Also by popular demand, I've flipped the Vibrations cassette of Eternal Tapestry over. We heard the galvanic psych jam of side A a couple weeks ago (on AFS v. 144) which I have hailed in other dustier corners of the internet as the most rewarding patience test in recent memory, invoking positive comparisons to recent outings by Acid Mothers Temple. One of our listeners was bummed to discover that the supply of 100 tapes has already run out at Not Not Fun, but he wanted so badly to hear side B that I've also answered his request to play it in its entirety. Better not wait once that Mystic Inductions LP drops on Not Not Fun. It's due out sometime in the fall.

I've been long overdue in playing some Edgar Broughton Band on AFS. These anarchist proto-metallers grew outta the UK's psych scene of the late 60s and became proggier as time wore on. Surely fans of current bands like Danava and The Sword should dig out E.B.B., but for me, their finest material happened on their debut album, Wasa Wasa, and early singles ("Evil" was also the A-side of their first) such as "Out! Demons, Out!" (a rewrite of The Fugs' "Exorcising The Demons Out Of The Pentagon") and "Apache Dropout" (a sorta mash-up of "Apache" and Captain Beefheart's "Dropout Boogie"). Along with the Deviants, Groundhogs, and pre-TG art terrorism by Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, the Broughtons should be considered as one of the most important and influential protopunkers of the UK.

My top recommendation for this weekend if you are in or near Sacramento is to go Sunday night to the Stoney Inn and eat the ½-lb. smothered burger and chase it with a very fine rock 'n' roll show featuring the Unnatural Helpers and Replicator. Elsewhere, you can catch the Helpers from Seattle on their west coast tour, and bring $5 extra to buy their brand-new 7"...

Saturday, 9/8 in Portland @ Clinton Street Pub
Sunday, 9/9 in Sacto @ The Stoney Inn, 1320 Del Paso Blvd
Monday, 9/10 early show (7:00) in SF @ The Hemlock Tavern
Tuesday, 9/11 on-air (7:00-9:00) on Freeform KDVS, 90.3 FM in Davis
Wednesday, 9/12 in L.A. @ The Echo
Friday, 9/14 in S.F. @ Bottom of the Hill
Saturday, 9/15 in Chico @ Off Limits

It's about damn time that we got this Annihilation Time 7" which actually came out in late 2006. This might be just about the best band to infuse hardcore with hard-chargin', ballsy blazin' riff rock since Death Side, Lip Cream, and the mid-period Poison Idea of nearly 20 years ago. Maybe Uncurbed did it best, but Annihilation Time is not merely a sped-up Mötörhead. Rupture might also take the cake for rockin'est HC ever, but we'll visit that later in this post. I will not be missing A.T. the next time they rip through this area.



Next up is another selection from the new album by Halifax, Nova Scotia's Be Bad, who to my ears sound like they might've been listening very recently to records dating back to the death of HC/emo circa 1997 through that scene's prolonged death-rale as heard on labels like GSL and Three.One.G; throw in some of the last 12 years of neo-no-wave on Skin Graft and Troubleman, but then trip into some of the more expansive psychedelic sounds that we old dudes scratch our beards to. This is an exciting intersection of styles for me to contemplate because I'll admit to being a fanboy of all that "kid stuff" and the many (often redundant or superfluous) "post-" and "-core" -fixes a decade and thirty pounds ago, and now here I am lookin' like Grizzly Adams lyin' on the couch listening to the Cherry Blossoms to get me more relaxed. I'm very familiar with the road Be Bad is travelling, and copping a phrase from the O.G. beardos--"The journey is the destination, man"--I gotta give these miscreants major credit for having arrived already. Vision Correction is a very strong album, a sharp sinister onslaught of spartan but muscular rhythms as sexy as the most menacing moments of the A Frames. Night Wounds and Duchesses are two more comparisons, but Be Bad are more heavy-handed on the downstrokes like post-HC that's still truer to HC. The lushness of the production showcases these tasty guitar textures very well but steers clear of any aftertaste of excess gloss. Effects send guitars and vocals sometimes soaring into the ethers, swirling out or fluttering, but there's still a lotta powerful wallop. I'll hafta show you on a future AFS, but track 7 locks into a motorik groove for the longhaul, and track 8 more than just dabbles in the acid...it's the one full-on psych bliss-blast. This is definitely a band to watch.

Last week, Ryan Wells wrote a great post for Static Party blog on the Get Fucked, Cunt EP by Rupture, positing this 7" as the antithesis of punk's P.C. movement which was peaking in the mid-90s just as these loathesome west Aussie scumbags were wantonly plummeting to depths of amorality rarely achieved. Go read it today. Four of the six songs on this record can be heard at links below the post, including "Herpes Fuck Farm" and the exceedingly criminal "Let's Go to the Primary School." I've played "I'm Insane" for you this week, and it's one of the two songs that you won't hear at Static Party. Strangely enough, it's also the only song on this EP that's playable on the radio at any hour.

The new Lamps album is still ruling me every week as I listen at home. As much as I liked the first 12" on In the Red, I think this one steps the game up bigtime and splits the goalposts between two of my all-time fave bands, Feedtime and The Intelligence. Leading lamp Monty Buckles also makes some of the finest videos for primo garage/artpunk bands that you might ever see on YouTube, but if you never saw this Lamps video when it was new at Victim of Time, watch it now...



When the Terrible Twos ripped through the west coast, I had hyped them as being an ex-member or two of the Piranhas, but apparently they are not related to that band at all. I had heard the ex-Piranhas thing last year when their "Plunderball" single had come out, and I've probably reported that here a few times since then. So, this is my retraction...sorry. I do strive to maintain accuracy here. So, this is a different new 7" besides their awesome Radical Tadpoles EP, and while their keyboards seem to be buried or indistinguishable or perhaps absent on this record, these three songs on A+A (a.k.a. "Alcohol + Adderal") are so raucous they take your breath away. Wild stuff!

more notes and reviews later, I hope...stay tuned!