The superior SUPERCHARGER, sublimated even below the vastly inferior “Eight Ball Scratch” and The Mummies, circa 1991 or so. I probably attended this event, though have no knowledge of it remaining in 2014.
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Dynamite Hemorrhage contributing editor Erika Elizabeth’s got the best music podcast on the planet. Here’s her December edition.
DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE’s Best of 2014
Our year was punctuated by the liftoff of our first fanzine the final week of 2013, and by our second issue just a few weeks ago. In between, we made 26 episodes of the Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio podcast, upon which everything from the list below was played.
Best Full-Length LPs/CDs/Cassettes/Downloads
- HONEY RADAR – “Chain Smoking on Easter”
- SNEAKS – “Sneaks”
- COLD BEAT – “Over Me”
- THE CONEHEADS – “Total Conetrol” & “Canadian Cone”
- GOOD THROB – “Fuck Off”
- PROPER ORNAMENTS – “Wooden Head”
- TRICK MAMMOTH – “Floristry”
- DARK MATTER – “Dark Matter”
- GERM HOUSE – “Showing Symptoms”
- WHITE FENCE – “For The Recently Found Innocent”
Best 45s
- KING TEARS MORTUARY – “Asleep At The Wheel of Fortune”
- NOTS – “Fix/Modern”
- WET BLANKETS – “Dieter Caught My Bus/Television Suicide”
- PANG – “Young Professionals”
- MEN OH PAUSE – “Pulse Check”
- THE COOLIES – “Punk Is Bread”
- LIFE STINKS – “Portraits/Under The Rug”
- ROACHCLIP – “Calmer In This town”
- VELO – “Tight Time”
- SYNTHETIC ID – “Escapement”
Best Archival Releases
- VARIOUS – “Back From The Grave, Volume 9” CD
- REMA-REMA – “International Scale/Short Stories” 45
- CRIME – “Murder By Guitar 1976-1980” LP/CD
- VARIOUS – “Punk 45, Volume 3: Sick On You! etc.” LP/CD
- THE KLITZ – “Sounds of Memphis ‘78” 45
- THE SPIES – “The Battle of Bosworth Terrace” LP
- PIP PROUD – “A Fraying Space” LP
- X__X – “X_Sticky Fingers_X” LP
- JACK RUBY – “Hit and Run” 2xCD
- SONIC CHICKEN 4 – “Sonic Chicken 4” LP
What kind of band reads Dynamite Hemorrhage?
KING TEARS MORTUARY does – especially when they’re in it.
Wrote this about one of the favorites back on my Agony Shorthand blog in 2004….this CD/record in question is available to listen to here.
SUPERCHARGER WERE FAR OUT……
There’s a live recording from the early 1990s making the rounds on this illegal file-sharing site (I’ve only read about the naughty site, I’d never actually use it to illegally download music!!) from SUPERCHARGER, perhaps the hottest raw, punk-infused “oldies” band of all time. It’s from about 1992 or 1993 at the Covered Wagon in San Francisco, and for all I remember of those years, I was there. I enthusiastically saw the band a good 6-7 times around this period, but it’s funny, I always rated their garage revisionist pals/peers THE MUMMIES higher and thus celebrated with the latter upward of a dozen+ times. History – at least my version of history – now says Supercharger were the better band, and this blazer of a live set confirms it. What came off as a bit inept and tentative at the time – a posture nurtured by the band themselves – is full-on wild and overamped energy here, with the usual coterie of screaming girls in the background cheering them on. (These same females were fixtures at Mummies and Phantom Surfers shows during the era, and a few later started The Trashwomen. The apple did not fall far from the tree).
The set is way tighter than I remembered, and each 90-second knockout is complimented mere seconds later by another crashing intro. Oh, and a hippie in the audience gets disgraced in public – always a treat!
Guitarist/vocalist Darren Raffaelli is sorely missed by “the scene” – this guy was a terrific, sweat-soaked frontman, yelping and whooping his way through 50s ramalama oldies and originals that sounded just like 50s ramalama oldies. This live set even contains a version of BUNKER HILL’s masterpiece “The Girl Can’t Dance”, but the band charge through it so quickly you might’ve been lost in your pint while it was playing (at least that’s where I imagine I was). Raffaelli’s last move that I know about was a mid-90s 45 I never heard called “Donny Denim”, to say nothing of his shepherding of THE DONNAS’ first LP (something I’ll spout about in the weeks to come). Greg Lowery, at least, put his post-Supercharger energies toward a hot label and band, and Karen, the drummer? Saw her at Safeway a few years ago in the dairy section.
Yet Supercharger needn’t be lost to history and illegal, immoral file-sharers – there’s a terrific under-the-radar compilation of their 45s that came out a year ago that I highly recommend called “Singles Party”, and if you haven’t heard “Supercharger Goes Way Out”, by all means get on the case!
(UPDATE: now this is embarrassing. This ill-gotten live set that I was so proud of procuring is actually an OFFICIAL release on Lowery’s Rip Off label! Limited edition! Go to it).
KING TEARS MORTUARY, Sydney, Australia’s champions of music, live just this past Saturday. Lifted from their Facebook page. Read two pages of chatter with them in the new Dynamite Hemorrhage #2 fanzine.
GIBSON BROS, live at Used Kids Records in Columbus, likely around 1986 or so.
There’s a download of a live tape of a previously-unavailable BAGS show now available on the revelatory Noise Addiction II blog – live March 30th, 1979 at Club 88 in Los Angeles (remember Wayne, the owner, from his turn in “The Decline of Western Civilization”?), with all sorts of unnamed and therefore unreleased songs. Wow.
The bizarro INFLATABLE BOY CLAMS double 45 from 1981 is coming out via reissue on Superior Viaduct in about a month. Dangerous Minds did a piece on them in anticipatory celebration.
This record was a popular one on the college station I listened to in my youth. Here’s what I wrote about it on Agony Shorthand nine years ago:
INFLATABLE BOY CLAMS : “INFLATABLE BOY CLAMS” 2×45…..
Yesterday mention was made on this site of the ocean of bizarro, shoestring-budget obscurities pouring out of the Anglophilic countries circa 1978-82, many of which are slowly being brought back to consciousness thanks to mp3 blogs, tribute sites and comps like Hyped2Death’s MESSTHETICS and HOMEWORK series. One such record I remember quite well, but never owned until I found this web site & scooped up all five tracks, was the darkly weird INFLATABLE BOY CLAMS 2×45.
KFJC, my teenage radio station of choice, used to play the novelty track “I’m Sorry” from this set all the friggin’ time, and the first time I heard it, it was my favorite song the whole rest of the day. Then I’d hear it three more times a day & the sheen wore off fast – and until last week, I hadn’t heard it in over 20 years (!). “Skeletons” sounds like the rarely-glimpsed side of 45 GRAVE that was keyboard-heavy & proficient in dark, campy cabaret rock. It’s a little goofy, but jarring and endearing nonetheless.
The band were part of the small scene that sprung up around San Francisco’s Club Foot circa 1980-81, a scene that existed on the fringe of the far more extreme FACTRIX/MONTE CAZAZZA/SRL stuff that was big in play at the time & was certainly a ways off from FLIPPER, THE LEWD and their misanthropic ilk. If they’d been from LA, their pals would likely have been the LAFMS crew like MONITOR and BPEOPLE. I’ve never heard PINK SECTION (to my knowledge), but two members of that band were in the Clams as well. Lots more can be learned at the aforementioned Inflatable Boy Clams tribute site. They must have been together only long enough to record this one session, because a band with four females making their own off-beat, deliberately tuneless racket should have been a hot enough property for at least a Subterranean or even a Rough Trade record deal, wouldn’t you think? The more I listen to these tracks, the more they transcend the kitschy novelty aspect, and head toward something a little more timeless and interesting. Let’s reevaluate this thing again a few years from now, what do you say?
NOW AVAILABLE directly from us or from great distributors & stores like Forced Exposure, Revolver USA, 12XU, Astro Black, Inflammable Material, Aquarius Records, Fusetron Sound, Nat Records and Goner.
It’s DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE #2.
Dynamite Hemorrhage #2 is an 84-page music fanzine dedicated to raw and sub-underground rocknroll from the last 5 decades. This one just came out in late November 2014.
It features:
– An interview and career-spanning retrospective with BILL DIREEN, the New Zealand-based musical iconoclast and creator of some of the most weird and wonderful underground pop music of the last 35 years. Great old photos of Vacuum, Six Impossible Things and more – with Direen’s take on his many recordings, bands and general outlook on creation & creativity.
– Tim Warren from Crypt Records, on the eve of two new volumes of the mind-destroying “BACK FROM THE GRAVE” 60s punk compilations, takes us through in profanity-strewn detail how he’s been putting these comps together since 1983, and the pain the man has endured to make sure you and I get to hear some of the most raw and rare rocknroll chaos of all time…!
– Interview with bedroom lo-fi pop savants HONEY RADAR, currently making many short, abrasive and lovely mini-masterpieces out of Philadelphia
– Interview with NOTS, raw and slashing earworm punk band from Memphis
– KING TEARS MORTUARY, Sydney, Australia’s answer to the question “What would a mix of C86, KBD punk and The Gories sound like?”
– Erika Elizabeth’s overview of lost and neglected female-fronted punk and post-punk bands and records you’ve never heard of
– The Layman’s Guide to 1970s Jamaican DUB – an overview of wild, weird and wacked dub reggae created during its peak era, along with ten essential dub recordings, explored
– Interviews with Jon Savage and Stuart Baker on the new PUNK 45 series of archival 70s punk reissues
– 87 record reviews
– 15 book reviews
– Advertisements from today’s top hitmaking labels
AGONY SHORTHAND 