Images

Uncategorized
Jay HinmanImageLeave a comment

I made a new mix you might be interested in listening to on 8Tracks. It’s a smorgasbord of 17 tracks from the first 7 months of 2014, all favorites here at the DH home offices.

Track listing:

  1. THE NOTS – Fix
  2. ROACHCLIP – Cast of Clowns
  3. CCTV – Mind Control
  4. THE COOLIES – God Take Me
  5. PANG – Relax
  6. PROPER ORNAMENTS – Step Into The Cold
  7. MEN OH PAUSE – Concrete Woman
  8. PIECE WAR – Call On Me
  9. COLD BEAT – UV
  10. DARK MATTER – Dark Matter
  11. APACHE DROPOUT – Heavy Window
  12. WET BLANKETS – TV Suicide
  13. GOOD THROB – Double White Denim
  14. USELESS EATERS – Dungeon
  15. WOLF GIRL – Good for Nothing
  16. EASTLINK – What a Silly Day (Australia Day)
  17. TRICK MAMMOTH – Week End

Stream Cast of Clowns by DynamiteHemorrhage.

Uncategorized
Jay HinmanImageLeave a comment

(Originally posted on my Hedonist Jive blog in 2011)

LET’S GO RECORD SHOPPING IN 1987 LOS ANGELES

My college tenure was marked by extreme record nerd mania and music immersion of a degree unparalleled outside of that of true obsessive-compulsives and 19-year-old college students. My life at UC-Santa Barbara in California from 1985 to 1989 was defined only partially by my studies and by my friendships – though these are by far the most lasting, memorable and tangential results of those 4 years (not to mention that through these friendships, I met my wife of 13 years). Yet if I’m honest with myself, a far greater portion of my mental space during this time period was instead devoted to my record accumulation, my radio show (“White Trash” on KCSB-FM Santa Barbara), to live music, fanzine buying & reading, “singing” in multiple bands (Umbilical Chords, Sluggo, We Got Power) – and dreaming of the next two-hour trip to Los Angeles, city of angels and record store buying sprees straight from heaven itself.

Those frequent trips down to LA generated a level of excitement totally out of proportion with the end result. Sure, I’d come home with some new records, usually about $20-$25 worth, most of which couldn’t be found in the Santa Barbara area. And yeah, we’d usually see some bands, probably The Lazy Cowgirls at Raji’s or The Anti-Club, or maybe a touring act like the Volcano Suns, Pussy Galore, Naked Raygun, Soul Asylum, Half Japanese, Dinosaur Jr., Das Damen, Sonic Youth and so on. Most of the time was spent on driving freeways, in keeping with the Los Angeles stereotype. My companions for these excursions varied, but were usually some combination of my record-collecting pal Bruce, my record-collecting cousin Doug, various optional parties (Linda, Brian, Brett, Rubin Fiberglass), and myself. We had a routine and a route that we kept to almost religiously. Anticipation built feverishly during the week, and unless we were blowing off school for these trips (which was absolutely the case on a couple of noteworthy days – I’m remembering the free daytime Soul Asylum show at UCLA in ’87), these jaunts were usually on Saturdays. A trip to LA to hit the record stores was certifiably the highlight of my month, and these trips were indeed taken just about every month without fail.

Every record store we visited back then is now gone. All of them. Most record stores everywhere are now gone, and the ones that aren’t will be soon, alas. I started these trips as a 19-year-old with a part-time dishwashing job and a part-time telemarketing job. I owned a 1980 Mustang that fit 4 people very uncomfortably. The route to record dork nirvana went down the 101, through towns like Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, and Agoura Hills. A stop at the Calabasas Taco Bell was almost always on the agenda. After this landmark belly-filler, we hit the fabled San Fernando Valley, of “valley girl” and porn fame, and the monthly rapture would begin.

MOBY DISC was a medium-sized used & new record store in the borough of Sherman Oaks, right in the heart of the Valley. Because it was on Ventura Blvd., and therefore not too far from the freeway, it was always a stop on our route despite it bearing the least amount of purchasable vinyl fruit. The only item of note that I ever bought there – that I can remember – was a copy of REDD KROSS’s “Neurotica” about five minutes after it arrived at the store. Bruce & I were big Redd Kross/Red Cross fans, and they hadn’t put out an album of originals since the godhead “Born Innocent” LP. We called ahead to see if Moby Disc were going to get it in that day, which they gruntingly confirmed, and then we basically arrived to nab it as the store was opening, like little girls. I recall the frustration of the owner as we asked him to root around on the loading dock or “in the back” when it wasn’t immediately on display when they took the locks off the doors. They ultimately found a cardboard box of LPs, cut it open, and gave us our prizes. The irony of the whole shebang is that I didn’t like that record at all from the first moment I heard it, and still don’t to this day.

Next we’d head into Hollywood itself and onto Melrose – the home of the hipster/shabby clothing boutiques, candle stores, ironic toy shops – and at least 5 record stores in the late 1980s. VINYL FETISH wasn’t a store we went to all that often, as it tended to focus on goth music and “industrial” beats, and was horrifically overpriced. Same with BLEEKER BOB’S – some amazing old punk records on the wall to gape at, but nothing I could afford. There was a sort of unsung hero used store called SECOND TIME AROUND where I used to find some treasures, usually for $1.99 or $2.99 a pop. It was horribly cluttered, and likely one of those places that was immediately put out of business in the very first years of illegal downloading. The Melrose granddaddy was ARON’S. I loved this store then, and almost as much when it moved over into a space twice this size on Highland Blvd. in the 1990s. Before there was Amoeba Music and its miles of used vinyl, there was Aron’s. I really had to pace myself in this place, as they had all the new stuff from the UK and Australia (I was big into Australian garage punk at the time); all the new SST, Homestead & Touch-n-Go releases; and tons of used vinyl at good prices. I still had two more stores to go.

So then it was usually time to hit another Taco Bell before heading down to Long Beach to ZED RECORDS. I think this was about 30-40 minutes away, along the 405 and then the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), but totally worth the drive. A great, weird, esoteric little store, ZED stocked a ton of 45s, lots of punk stuff, and seemed to cater both to dorks like us and to the more hardcore punker element buying Corrosion of Conformity and GBH records. This was also the era of a term no one uses any more – “speed metal”. In fact metal itself was tremendously popular in the late 80s, as any MTV viewer knew, but this Metallica-inspired speed metal (essentially, metal informed by punk) was h-u-g-e in the underground record stores of ’86-’87. I hated it, as I do now, but I recall ZED being a big gathering place for metalhead burnouts as well. In fact, compared to the bustling, if dusty, Melrose stores in Hollywood, the dark and somewhat ominous Zed Records was a place where one was potentially at risk for a fistfight. At least it felt that way at the time. I found a copy of the first Pussy Galore single there (“Feel Good About Your Body”) a little after their initial 12” EP came out, and I stupidly sold it on eBay years ago, way before its market peaked.

Finally, the trip headed back into LA for the coup de grace – RHINO RECORDS on Westwood Blvd, right over by UCLA. If any money was left after the previous rounds, it surely was blown here. Rhino sold most lightly used records for a mere $3.99 each, and I found crazy things – like all The Flesh Eaters records, or the 1978 “Tooth & Nail” punk compilation – for this price. There was this older (than us) guy Otis whom our friend Eric Stone knew and bought records from, and Otis was renown in collector circles. Long before the internet, Otis would mail out “The Otis list” of mail-order punk records you could buy directly from him, all of which most assuredly came from his used buybacks at Rhino. When I think of the prices then – Crime 45s for $8, “Yes LA” for $30 – it’s almost laughable. I only ordered from him a couple of times, because I didn’t have “that kind of money”. But he worked at Rhino, and he liked to talk vinyl and the Lazy Cowgirls. Totally our kind of guy.

These trips to LA definitely formed my view of the city as a cultural haven, as long as you were willing to look for it. LA’s alterna-culture didn’t hit you over the head the way New York’s or San Francisco’s did, but in a city of 7 million people and nearly 7 million miles to traverse, it was something you had to seek, possibly with the help of an alterna-sherpa. The journey, in a lot of ways, was indeed the destination. I wanted to pound out this blog post now, before I forgot the names of all these stores, and also as a tribute to the last record stores still standing in 2011, all of which are undoubtedly doomed. May you thrill the hearts of socially inept teenage & twentysomething music accumulators for the rest of your days.

Uncategorized
Jay HinmanImageLeave a comment

I’ve decided to interview a tiny handful of music curators who continually blow my mind with new discoveries. I’ve written in the past about curation and its crucial role in separating wheat from chaff; my entire music appreciation history has been spent following the superlative taste of others, while attempting to position myself in a similar space. The aim of the interview series is to figure out how music is curated in the digital space, and how things have evolved in finding music for others to listen to just in the last four or five years alone.
 
To kick off this project, I sent over a few questions to Matt Thornton, aka UrbanKill. You’re already following UrbanKill on Tumblr, right? If not, you’re missing the most dedicated, lightning-quick curation zealot out there, a guy who digs deeper than just about anyone to find you the obscure and intense. His tastes are, shall we say, “sub-underground” – just the way we like it. UrbanKill has turned Dynamite Hemorrhage onto a good dozen or more bands just in the past year alone; we thought it only appropriate that we kick off this series with a few questions for him. It’s long – but you’ve got the time.
 
Here goes:
 
DH: What’s your true, non-internet name; where do you reside; and how long have you been in the sub-underground rocknroll curation game (and where/how, if you’ve been online or offline elsewhere)?
 
UrbanKill, aka Matt Thornton: Matt Thornton. I was named after the first governor of New Hampshire, who was also the last signer of the Declaration of Independence. According to my aunts I am his decedent. They apparently did “rigorous research”, but I do not believe them, at all. One of them has a business designing Nutcrackers, and the other cried for three days when JFK Jr. died. Untrustworthy people if you ask me.

I’ve bounced around quite a bit, but I grew up in North Kingstown, RI, and I live in Rhode Island currently. Also lived in Ohio, San Francisco, and Italy. I have been obsessive about music since I was little. My sister would play lots of Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett. For whatever reason, I took to some of that, as well as The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Kinks, etc, early on, which also stemmed from my dad always having classic rock radio playing. My parents were separated, so when I visited my dad on the weekends he’d let me explore music and comedy and lots of things that were probably not suitable for a child. He’d tape Letterman segments and SNL for me, and take me to Providence to buy records on Thayer St (an important place due to its proximity to RISD and Brown University). I owned a lot of vinyl when I was a kid.

As far as the impulse to share music, the kids in my neighborhood didn’t really appreciate me putting my “Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy” tape in their boomboxes. I managed to make a single kid laugh once by playing him a song from Roger Waters’ “Music From The Body” that solely consisted of flatulence. I remember that being very calculated on my part. I wanted to connect my musical world to the kids around me, and actually borrowed that record from a sister as a way to lay down a path for them. But after the farting noises ceased, so did the interest.
 
DH: Are you, or were you, a physical “record collector” at any point? What insight can you offer into the state of music accumulation and curation in the digital age, how it’s evolved in the last 15 years of wide mp3 availability, and what it’s done to any taste for vinyl or other formats you may have had or still have?
 
Matt Thornton: I was a collector as a kid. I had a rough few years going into adolescence that included my mother dying, getting kicked out of school, getting arrested multiple times, drugs, etc. Suddenly rock and roll music didn’t speak to me at all, nor did punk or hardcore, and I think a lot of teens felt that way in the 90s – specifically those who were financially disadvantaged. All of the punks I knew seemed to live in nice houses, in nice neighborhoods, and I couldn’t understand what any of them were angry about. I think by the age of 15 or 16 I started to straighten out, and ended up getting a job at a restaurant. All my money from work went towards vinyl – entirely Hip-Hop 12” singles and LPs, aside from the one token Portishead album that every Hip-Hop kid seemed to have. Skippy Whites in North Providence and Newbury Comics in Warwick were two stores I spent a great deal of time in. Hip-Hop was my primary thing from about 11 all the way until early adulthood. I had a few years after that of blindly buying rock, punk, and indie records, and I think by the time I was 23 I figured out exactly what I liked. Hearing Cheater Slicks for the first time, with no knowledge of their history or fanbase, kind of kicked down some doors for me too. Hip-Hop is still the music that has the greatest effect on me emotionally though.

Vinyl remained constant in my life until a few years ago. It was always an unhealthy addiction for me personally. I never had the kind of money to afford the habit, but I’d drop ridiculous money on a single record and end up short on rent. It was foolish. I’ve spent the last few years trying to break bad habits and unhealthy behavior. I’m not suggesting that record collecting is unhealthy in general, but it was for me. I still buy records but I try to keep it within reason.

DH: Tell me a little about the process you go through to find obscurities from across the web: key sites you use; other curators you trust; links you follow; how quickly you post stuff; where you post it and so on.
 
Matt Thornton: My RSS feed is my main source. I add record label and band sites to it. Sometimes local city blogs that will post upcoming concerts also include stream links alongside artists, so I’ll add those. And then I just listen when records pop up. I try to keep reviews and opinions out of the way, at least with new music. Not because they shouldn’t be valued, but because I don’t want the interference in the process. The great writers will alter how I experience a record. I tend to want to make up my mind first and then see what they have to say. I end up being influenced by regular, short-form blogs more than critics, but there are definitely writers I love.

There are people who offer quite a bit, on Tumblr specifically. Arturo from Convulsive Records aka isitanart has turned me on to quite a bit, beyond just music. He’s posted art and poetry that have changed how I think about the world. There’s fuckinrecordreviews, who is a gateway to a world that I know little about, and has access to history that is incredibly valuable. Ozkar-Krapo is a genius at sorting through life’s oddities and the obscure. I have always enjoyed your various blogs. You’ve turned me on to a lot of music. There are tons of people. But I’ll just stop there because I’d end up forgetting people.

I never set out to be a curator with Tumblr. I would do this whole routine on my own, for my own satisfaction. Tumblr was just a service that kept me properly distracted and amused during work. But if that’s how others are going to regard me – if they do in fact see me that way – then great! I’ll go ahead and use that. To maybe help some band get a chance to tour and visit other cities, countries. These are experiences we should all have and they are valuable and life-changing. Living in Italy for six months was the greatest experience of my life and it stays with me every day. So if I can play a very small role in a system that enables this culture to keep moving, while the infrastructure around us is crumbling and making it harder than ever to dedicate yourself to art or travel, then I’m happy. To dedicate yourself to music isn’t easy or inexpensive, and I respect anyone who wants to go down that path, especially if they are talented, and have good intentions. If they’re being overshadowed by hype, I want to help.
 
I absolutely enjoy turning people on to new music. But the idea of being curator is more complicated. When I noticed I was becoming an “mp3 blogging personality”, I started to throw down more roadblocks in between the music posts, to avoid branding myself. The idea of branding is weird and uncomfortable. I don’t want to have a fake version of myself online, and I’m not a good enough writer to take the more esteemed route. I avoid aesthetic consistency as much as I can.

I want people to have to get used to me, because I’m not an easy sell in real life. To have a version of myself online, that everybody could hypothetically like, wouldn’t actually be that hard at all. It would also be a lie. And if I can’t hold my own simply as a writer, then there’s no reason to present myself as an expert. All I have is taste. Beyond that, I can maybe be entertaining and honest.

It doesn’t take much time for me to want to post a song. Whether or not I like a record is pretty immediate. It’s all pop to some degree, or at least what I’m drawn to has that basic structure. I certainly like when people experiment with it, or subvert it, but I’m not listening to drone records. I’ve had great experiences at both drone and noise shows though. But I can’t sit down and listen to either genre, no. And especially not on drugs. I used to listen to Trick Daddy when I did hallucinogens.

DH: What modern tools do you use to turn streams into mp3s – and can you say a few words about your personal ethical stance on doing so?
 
Matt Thornton: I use add-ons in my browser that auto-download streams. If a band has the stream up on bandcamp, the only reason I’d want to grab it with an add-on is due to presentation. I rotate how I’ll present music, for reasons I mentioned previously. So in that specific case, it makes no difference. Maybe the difference is arbitrary when you’re talking about a record streaming for free online, that people are accessing from their phones on their way to work vs something being shared on slsk. But just support the bands you love when you can. I can’t take a moral high ground or talk about what’s ethical. I haven’t always been a completely ethical person.
 
Perhaps it’s unethical to rip records and make the decision for the label on your own, yes. But there’s a communal aspect outside of labels, between fans, and I understand where people are coming from when they share new music. It’s not vampirism entirely. There were times when I was dead broke and dying to hear a new record, and certain people always had it there, waiting for me to hear. I love those people. I always wanted to give back to those people. I stopped ripping vinyl some years back, but my motive was always to return the favor.

DH: What musical sub-genres do you explore to find the rare and weird stuff you’re frequently posting, and what have been some of the best “finds” you’ve come across via what I assume is some pretty relentless digging?
 
Matt Thornton: I don’t necessarily look for specific genres, and certainly try to avoid adherents to genre. Hardcore has weirdly grown on me in the last few years, but it’s usually the groups that have a distinct worldview or sound and can dodge the clichés. Whatever outfit you have on doesn’t matter. Go ahead, wear stained white jeggings, I’ve gotten over my judgment of your filthy white pants. I just want to know how you interpret the world, and not from within an isolated bubble of reality. Stand outside of your comfort zone and tell me what you see and how you feel about it, or put that feeling into the music. Whether you’re serious, funny, ironic, doesn’t matter, but just have a point of view. It doesn’t matter if we agree, I just want to know who you are, and I want you to put your own stamp on the music your making. Dress it up however you like but the foundation is what’s important. You can also, you know, just write a good song, and I’ll be happy too. After years of digging around, you tend just develop the ability to zoom in on the right bands.

Right now I’m obsessed with BnP from New Zealand. Lowercase ‘n’. They’ve maybe a small but loyal following over there. No one cares stateside. I haven’t had any luck getting people to pay attention to them anyway. They’re a punk band. Maybe hardcore roots. A great combination of reckless and smart. Legit and morbid sense of humor. They have a song called “In The Key of Love”, that sounds like something people slow danced at the prom to in 1971 – until they start screaming at the end of the song, anyway. The live clips of them on YouTube are mayhem. Wild energy being let loose with no one trying to control it, with maybe everyone in attendance having a basic trust in each other that things won’t get ugly. They have two full-lengths, two singles, and a live album on Bandcamp. All free.

Other recent discoveries? I’ve gone on and on about Human Abfall from Germany on tumblr. Positive Disintegration from Germany are promising, although they’ve only a couple of songs on Soundcloud. One, “Ruby Cabernet”, is mind blowing and begging for a 7” release. Also: Ivan The Tolerable (UK), Telstar Drugs (Calgary), Taulard (France), Ralph (NZ), Expert Alterations (Baltimore). Not recent, but I still listen to a tape from 2012 by a short-lived Polish noise-punk band, Pustostany, pretty regularly. think people would have – and still would – love that record over here and elsewhere. I’ve listened to Sleaford Mods and Schoolboy Q more than anything recently, though, which places me in the same boat as a lot of folks.

DH: What parallels do you see to the days of flipping through stacks of records in crates, if any – and what sort of mindset does a modern digital curator need to bring to the search for the best obscurities?
 
Matt Thornton: There’s no real parallel. Digging through music online is not on par with being in a record store, flipping through records, interacting with people, etc. Real life anything wins over the online replacement. But whether one is better as an experience doesn’t mean much to me. We can allow the digital world to replace real-life, or we can grow up and juggle both and use everything to our advantage.

The hype cycles that were built by the record industry still linger and it’s annoying. Everyone can go find music on their own, and I think the music world specifically would be better if we all went down our own paths and brought things back for each other. There’s no need for a fucking chorus line of bloggers pushing some Burger rock, that we all know is going to be rendered worthless within months. And they’re not even making any money. It’s for blog hits. Who cares? Go look around! The internet NEVER ENDS! Find something on your own and develop your own experience with it and share it with the few people that matter to you.
 
I have total and complete sympathy for people who have busy lives and can’t dedicate time to finding new music, or just have different priorities. But there’s no industry machine for music bloggers to be a part of any more. I don’t get why 300 of them are competing with each other to tell me the same exact thing. I understand why large record companies assault the public with a barrage of advertisements and hype. But why are we willingly trying to replace that system on our own with one that acts the same way, and feeds off people the same way?

As much as I despise most music blogs, good music critics will always be important. If you’re not equipped with the tools to be one, develop a different approach. There’s no shame in that. More people should experiment with how they present music, instead of writing a generic paragraph-per-record where they claim their face gets melted by every record they hear. But good music critics are generally valuable to me because they’re good writers, first and foremost. I can read Daniel Stewart no matter what record he’s talking about, and I’ll generally be more interested in how he presents his ideas than the record he’s talking about. There’s always going to be a place for writers like that, right?

Uncategorized
Jay HinmanImageLeave a comment

It appears to have been out for a couple of years now, but this “BRAVE WORDS – NZ INDIE 1980-1995” fanzine, put out by one April Welsh, is a great DIY overview of New Zealand’s flourishing underground of rocknroll/pop during that era. Flying Nun primarily, not Xpressway nor the long tail of 80s NZ bedroom weirdos we worship over here.

I don’t know how to procure a print copy, but you can read the whole thing for free right now on Issuu.