Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine

I was at a gig the other week and between bands they played Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut. It was playing too loud for conversation, so all the non-smokers were just stood there enjoying it and remembering what a great album it is. I, for one, had long forgotten how great it is; I'd loved it back in the day and listened to it so often I didn't feel I had to anymore - I knew it backwards. However, in those years that passed with Rage only being played sporadically, my memory of what an excellent album this is faded. It's now 20 years old and it still blows me away.

I'd never heard of Rage Against the Machine until the 29th of December 1999, when some friends and I had gone record shopping in the many second-hand shops of Bournemouth. I'd filled out my Manics collection (on cd) and picked up Ignition by The Offspring. Hugh bought a couple of cds, one of them Rage's debut and their name first passed my ears as we stood outside the shop comparing our purchases. Back then we all taped each other's cds so I recorded Hugh's copy and eventually bought a copy a year later when a friend's brother was shifting all of his cds for a fiver each (I think he'd recorded them all onto mini-disc, a move he'd surely come to regret). A year or so later I was in Newbury Comics in Boston, found the LP and picked it up along with some Tool records, Gorilla Biscuits and a Rival Schools 7"). I knew it was a classic and was pretty pleased to have it on vinyl (the album has one of the most brutal covers out there - not many records have an actual picture of a man dying on the front, although that's probably a good thing).

Now, nearly 13 years after first hearing this album, it's still incredible. As soon as each song starts it's nearly impossible to not drum along or mime the bass or guitar or rap every single word that Zach spits. I could never listen to this album when I was revising for exams because it makes it so hard to focus on the task at hand. Years later it's still stealing my attention. Sure, lines like "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" sound a little cliché these days, but the songs are so good you just don't care. I couldn't possibly list my favourite songs as there's not a bad one on there, but Bombtrack, Take the Power Back and the outro to Bullet in the Head always stayed with me.

Rage were up there with the first bands I ever saw live - my 8th gig was the Sunday of Reading Festival in 2000 where we saw, what would be for a while at least, Rage's last UK show - and they were incredible. The pit down the front was ferocious and I cautiously stayed a bit further back. I remember taking comfort in the fact I wasn't the only one also "singing" the guitar bits. I would see them two more times, including the free Finsbury Park "Thank You" show for getting them the Christmas number one spot. A lot of people I knew were against the campaign to get RATM to number one citing such arguments as "when did you last care about who had the number one single?", etc (even arguing it was unfair to the X-Factor winner). However, I was all for the idea, to the extent I even downloaded a song I have the mp3 of. Yes, I've not given a shit about the singles chart in a very long time, but as a kid I certainly did, and I loved the idea that people could come together to affect something like that. I get the point of X-Factor, but I'm not it's target audience and hope I never am, so it pleases me to see people with fond memories of non-pop music taking the power back, as it were.

Musically it was excellent, but in other ways the Finsbury Park show was an odd one. I figured the audience would be much younger, but I'd say that on average the crowd were the same age as me and upwards. It made me a bit sad to think that in the years since Rage broke up kids just weren't getting into them. The idea of passing through your teenage years without Killing in the Name just seems wrong.

This album has just been re-issued in a variety of formats, and the 2cd+dvd package looks pretty nice. The deluxe boxset looks even nicer, but probably out of my price range for an album I already have two copies of. If I didn't own this LP I'd probably be more tempted (it also comes with the dvd of the Finsbury Park gig, which would be nice to re-live).


Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £6.30 new
Bought: Newbury Comics, Boston
When: 05/08/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The No WTO Combo - Live from the Battle in Seattle

Here is a record I spent quite a while looking for, almost entirely because of the line up. The idea of Krist Novoselic and Kim Thayil playing in the same band definitely appealed to me. By then I hadn't come to dislike Jello Biafra's voice quite so much so I probably considered that a pro too. I think Mary-Ann Hobbs played a song on the Radio One Rock Show around when it came out and I guess I enjoyed it, but it was definitely the Nirvana/Soundgarden connection that kept the record in my mind.

Anyway, years passed (many years, nearly 8 of them) and I eventually found this in Damaged Records in Cardiff for a mere £6, so excitedly took it home to finally hear the whole thing. The problem is that in those nearly 8 years, I'd discovered that Jello Biafra's voice winds me up no end. I have one of the albums he did with the Melvins and I find that equally hard on the ears. Unfortunately the record starts with a sprawling spoken word rant by Jello, in which he makes some perfectly reasonable points if you can get past his voice. The four songs that follow are plenty nice enough, again despite Jello's voice, and make for an interesting listen on their own.

Whilst in 2000 I was at an age where I really should have known a lot more about what was going on in the world than I did, the politics and meaning behind this record are a bit lost on me. Worse still, I'm yet to sit down and read the lengthy essays inside the book (which I'm sure will fill me in greatly). There's no excuse for ignorance, but it's not high on my priorities right now. I have a rough idea of the history and this record is certainly captures the time and place nicely, even though I was neither there nor involved.


Format: 12", 8-page 10" booklet
Tracks: 5
Cost: £6 new
Bought: Damaged Records
When: 16/08/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Talons - Hollow Realm

If I had to try to classify Talons (which I don't have to, but will anyway), I'd put them somewhere between Godspeed and Explosions in the Sky, with songs half the length. It's a cheap comparison, but I think it works. They have some huge songs on Hollow Realm and I enjoy it when I play it. However I don't play it all that often; if I'm working then I like my instrumental post-rock a little less heavy and a little more gentle, and if I'm after some heavy tunes I tend to go for something with lyrics. I've long been of the belief that this is due to my complete lack of musical skills - lyrics are the easiest thing for a non-musician to grasp.

Anyway, it's a good record. The opener St. Mary's Will be the Death of Us All is a great way to start a record and Iris is pretty cool too, but the epic Hollow Depth is the highlight of the album. The whole record feels like a nice step on from their 7" of The Pearl and Manatee (which you can read more about here, along with the story of how I first heard Talons). I picked the LP up in Banquet in January two years ago. In checking that fact, I was quite surprised I'd had it for two whole years given the number of plays it's probably had. Don't get me wrong, I like it, but somehow I don't love it. I can't put my finger on why. Usually I love violins and these guys have two violinists! Thinking about it, it was around that time my ex-girlfriend and I broke up, which puts a largely negative spin on a lot of things, but also on the same trip to Banquet I bought the Kelly Kemp + Bangers + El Morgan + The Arteries split which fast became my favourite 7" of all time and I played to death. No wonder Talons got little time on my turntable. Interestingly, the Decemberists record I also bought that day got equally neglected.

So nothing ground-breaking to say here. If you read this hoping I'd convince you to buy the record, I suspect giving them a listen would be a more productive route. If you love this record feel free to convince me that it's great, and if you're in the band I apologise for not being more excited by your record. It's perfectly good, but it hasn't bowled me over just yet.


Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 8
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 17/01/11
Colour: White
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code.

Shores - Little Something

I picked up this 7" when buying the new Shores LP from the Different Kitchen distro. I was drawn in by the Nirvana cover and added it to the handful of records I was ordering. The A-side, Little One, is a cover of a song by Twelve Hour Turn, who I know nothing about except that they're also on No Idea Records.

I'm no huge Nirvana fan, but they wrote some pretty decent songs, and I always enjoyed Something in the Way for how slow and stripped back it sounded. It then seems natural that Shores would cover this particular Nirvana song and the gentle build-up fits their style nicely. It's certainly a nice little record.


Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £3.85 new
Bought: Different Kitchen distro
When: 14/11/12
Colour: Black
Etching: Side 1: "Hi John..." Side 2: "Did I get you again?"
mp3s: Download code

Les Savy Fav - Go Forth

I've shockingly neglected this record. The problem with buying a huge amount of records in one go is that it's all to easy to not give them the time they deserve, and that's what happened here: I was in Colorado visiting a friend and spent a great deal of time in Bart's CD Cellar and Albums on the Hill. I spent my first ever Record Store Day in those two shops (RSD hadn't long been a thing, and this was long before the queues and exclusive records of modern times) and came home with this in the middle of a large stack of vinyl. I played all the albums shortly after getting back and even made mp3s of this one (although the often-shitty quality of my USB turntable might be to blame for the lack of plays).

The first time I heard of Les Savy Fav was by the way of a comparison to The Paper Chase when I first got into them (or rather, slightly before that. More details are here), however that wasn't what got me into them. Towards the end of my first semester in Australia I saw a girl in my halls-of-residence who I hadn't noticed before. I noticed her this time because she was wearing a Les Savy Fav t-shirt and so I assumed she at least had a cool taste in music (this was true. Too cool in fact, as I've mentioned here and here). At the start of my second semester there we were introduced by a mutual friend called Jimmy and she got me into a lot of bands I might not have heard otherwise. Despite all of this, I still didn't actually listen to Les Savy Fav until I got back to the UK and found a copy of Inches on cd in London. I'd heard about the concept (nine 7"s over their career put together to make an album) and thought it was pretty cool. I enjoyed them, but found I was way more into the earlier records than the later ones (Our Coastal Hymn is a mixtape staple).

Anyway, I've gradually picked up their back-catalogue (except for The Cat and the Cobra, which I really must buy). Playing this now, I don't know why I don't play it more often. Hopefully this realisation will be the catalyst that gets me listening to it more. Daily Dares and Pills are definitely highlights and it ends nicely with the line "This giving in is wearing thin" over and over and a locked groove of fuzz and feedback. Good stuff, but Inches is still a more rewarding listen.


Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £7.04 new
Bought: Bart's CD Cellar, Boulder
When: 18/04/08
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Steppin' me to death, steppin' me to death" Side B: "Shovolve"
mp3s: no

Iron Chic - Not Like This

I never thought that pop-punk would be a genre I'd be into, but Not Like This is so catchy it's impossible not to love it. The whole album is hook after hook and every lyric makes you want to sing along. In fact, there's not a moment in Cutesy Monster Man that doesn't make me want to be down the front at an Iron Chic show screaming along, and that feeling pretty much continues for the next half an hour. At times, it's an aggressive record, but the overwhelming theme is shamelessly-fucking-upbeat.

I hadn't heard Iron Chic when I bought this LP. Banquet were putting out the UK cd version and had a show coming up in The Peel with Pacer and OK Pilot, both of whom were bands I was into. The ticket was £7 or £13 with the LP, so I chanced it (Banquet usually know pretty good music. As a side note, this record exists in countless colours so I must be the only sucker with black vinyl). At this point I don't think I'd even heard of Latterman, or any of the bands that have some connection to them, with the exception of RVIVR who'd made it into a lot of friends end-of-year lists in 2010. I'd streamed the RVIVR album and enjoyed it, but still wouldn't be aware of the Latterman connection until much later. I now own a whole much of records by these related bands but I've been putting off writing about them until I'd written about Iron Chic.

Part of the reason I love this album so much is because Iron Chic were probably the highlight of Fest in 2011. I liked the record a lot beforehand, and the show at The Peel was great fun but their set on the Saturday afternoon of Fest was incredible. They played in 8 Seconds, which was a large and fairly unpleasant venue. I'd been in there for a bit and caught RVIVR before them (who were great too). The crowd definitely began to swell before Iron Chic came on, but as soon as they started to play the whole room went crazy. I'm not talking in hyperbole here, I was about halfway back and instantly lifted off my feet and carried in every direction the crowd moved. There was a sea of bodies crowd-surfing and you could barely even hear the band for the singing. Whilst there's something cool about seeing a large band play a small venue, it turns out it's even better to see a small band rock such a large venue It was really a sight to be seen. It puts a smile on my face just thinking about it.


Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 18/03/11
Colour: Black
Etching: Side 1: "Let Dougbagg do it", Side 2: none
mp3s: Download code

The Verve - Urban Hymns

I remember vividly the first two times I heard Bitter Sweet Symphony; they were a consecutive Friday and Saturday in 1997. Back then, Top of the Pops was on a Friday night and I was 13, so it was pretty important to be on top of whatever music was coming out, even if most of it was rubbish. One Friday they showed the video for Bitter Sweet Symphony for the first time, and it pulled me in and amazed me like it did so many other people. I remember the strings and Richard Ashcroft's cocky swagger and his leather jacket and the layered vocals at the end and thinking the whole thing was so fucking cool. The next day I was sat with my dad in the car waiting whilst my mum took the cat to see the vet and The Verve came on the radio. Even without the video, I was still blown away by the song and I decided there and then that I was a fan of The Verve. I had no particular musical taste at the time and no music of my own (other than a 7" of Bryan Adam's Everything I Do (I Do it for You) that I'd bought when I was 7), so this was a pretty big moment.

Bitter Sweet Symphony blew up and was huge that summer. At the end of it, Urban Hymns came out and I bought the cd in some shop in Swindon. God knows where I got £12 to buy it at that age, but this was before cheap cds, so I probably just figured it was the only way I get to hear the album. The also-dramatic The Drugs Don't Work had been a single too so I knew there'd be at least two good songs on it. At that age, if you liked something you had to love it, and I'd spent a long time ranting to my friends about how great The Verve were and how great their album would be. Given that it was the first album I bought, I have no idea what I was basing that on.

Anyway, Urban Hymns turned out to be a pretty sprawling and varied record. I was way too young to understand quite how many drugs they were on, but enjoyed it nonetheless. For me, the album fell naturally into four parts (although not the way they're split on the vinyl): there was the accessible pop part consisting of the first four songs, the druggy mind-fuck of Catching the Butterfly through to Weeping Willow, the secretly great songs hidden away at the end, and finally the crazed Come On. Despite not getting it at all, I quite enjoyed the druggy shoe-gaze tracks, but it was songs like One Day, This Time and Velvet Morning that made me feel like I'd found this secret stash of songs no one else knew about and those people who only heard the singles wouldn't get to find out about them. My favourite changed between those three songs almost weekly, although it was always really Bitter Sweet Symphony.

Fifteen years later the album is still great. Unlike most of the other albums of that age I've written about on here, I've been listening to this album for all of those fifteen years. Sure, there have been some large gaps in there, but it's nice to know that a record I've been playing for more than half my life can still be one of my favourites. Weeping Willow and Come On stand out particularly as highlights now. I became a pretty big fan of The Verve and A Northern Soul even beat Urban Hymns in my list of the best albums of the 1990's I made a few years ago.

I spent a while thinking I should pick up a vinyl copy of Urban Hymns but never really putting the effort in to win copies on eBay. I eventually decided to order a copy into Spillers as one of my Tuesday-Records-From-Spillers, but with a bigger goal in mind. Since Urban Hymns occupies row #1 in my record+cd collection spreadsheet, I though it might be nice for it to occupy another significant number, and row #1000 was fast approaching. Unfortunately, due to some miscounting, the Urban Hymns LP sits in #1006 (with #1000 taken by the Tuesday-Record-From-Spillers from three weeks earlier - Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin by O'Death - a nice but in no way significant record). Spillers had to import Urban Hymns, but £20 is worth it to have this record in my racks.

I saw The Verve once, at Glastonbury in 2008. My friends and I were working on the bar for our friend's uncle's charity (our wages went to charity but in return we got free entrance to the festival and more free alcohol than we could handle). Unfortunately our shift clashed with The Verve's set, but our bar overlooked the main stage and I took a long break to catch some songs from a better angle with my friend Olly. When they played Bitter Sweet Symphony, I was having such a good time I didn't even care that I was stuck behind the bar. That song played such a huge part in me becoming the music fan I am today that it's almost impossible to explain. Bitter Sweet Symphony is definitely up there amongst the top three, if not number one, in the list of "Songs that Changed my Life".


Format: Double 12", picture sleeves
Tracks: 13
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Spillers
When: 23/10/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no