lung leg: jane at nice n’sleazy by blackmagicplastic on Flickr.
Jane Egypt from LUNG LEG, live in Glasglow 4/18/98.
Images
One of the most satisfying and consistent releases of 2012 so far is “Circles” by MOON DUO. I know, right? I’d about given up on Ripley Johnson after his Wooden Shjips albums continued to fall short of the the early promise of those amazing 45s, and paid a cursory passing interest in Moon Duo when they started up and found it to be progressive/psych twaddle-wank. With all due respect, of course! (And he is due quite a bit for those Shjips records). Maybe I should revisit that stuff, or maybe they evolved toward me in an effort to curry my favor.
In any case, this record is fantastic. Moon Duo are now deeply into Stereolab territory, with a dose of heavy psych and a thin veneer of krautrock. Each song bend and shapes multiple riffs into submission, never tiring and never boring. It’s approachable to all but the most fearful of listeners – a “pop” record coming from deep lysergic territory. It’s listenable over on Spotify for $0.00 if you wanna check it out.
Flyer for May 20th, 1989 MONOSHOCK live show/party in Isla Vista, CA.
The Mummies 1991 on Flickr.
One of my all-time favorite live music photos, and it was taken by super-photographer Nicole Penegor for my SUPERDOPE fanzine in 1991. The Mummies were playing live at the DNA Lounge, which was the first and last time I ever saw a show at that venue.
I hope I’m not bumming anyone’s high too much by declaring that I find this band to be extremely overrated and posthumously very uninteresting. Supercharger all the way, baby.
Believe it or not, for a short period of time, WHITE ZOMBIE were an absolutely amazing molten mess of a band. They played on my radio show on KCSB-FM Santa Barbara in May 1988, and their live show in Los Angeles the next night – at the Alcohol Salad club in the heart of skid row – was at the time one of the loudest, wildest shows I’d ever seen. I wrote a remembrance of the band and their magic Southern California trip on my old blog Agony Shorthand, and you can read all that here.
Here they are on the cover of Gerard Cosloy’s CONFLICT fanzine from a little earlier than that.
Lisa from New York’s HONEYMOON KILLERS, taken from the pages of Away From The Pulsebeat fanzine in 1987. They were a mediocre horror/garage/noise band around this time, with three nearly identical albums, but really started busting out in the following couple of years. Really roaring there at the end, as captured on their one and only Sub Pop 45.
XYX, live at Beerland, Austin TX, May 2009.
Early 1990s fanzine from San Diego called OSMOTIC TONGUE PRESSURE, named after a Richard Meltzer-ism of unknown provenance. The guy behind this, Mike Kinney, is unfortunately no longer with us. I know they did at least five of these things, but this is the only one I ever had.
Throbbing Gristle, Vox Pop, SWA @ Veterans Auditorium. 1981
Can you imagine how bummed you’d have been to have come to this legendary show but had to stand through SWA to get there…?
I’ve been fortunate to have been asked to pen some liner notes for the upcoming 20th-anniversary reissue of COME’s masterful “Eleven: Eleven” LP from ‘92. I was sent this scan by the band, from my fanzine Superdope from the following year, to jog my memory. Tempting to do a little cut-n-paste and call it day, but I’ll see what I can come up with in the next hour or two.
AGONY SHORTHAND 