Various Artists - Tiny Changes: A Celebration of Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight

 

I was gutted when I heard the news of Scott Hutchison's disappearance and subsequent death. I'd drifted away from Frightened Rabbit's music at the time, but The Midnight Organ Fight remained a firm favourite. I'd bought it at the very start of my PhD having read a review in the university newspaper (which dates the time I read it, as I'm pretty sure no one reads the university newspaper beyond their first few weeks), and the line "While I'm alive, I'll make tiny changes to earth" became something of a mantra for the next three-and-a-half years - the only way to motivate yourself through a PhD is remembering that the very minor thing you're studying is entirely new, and the whole purpose is to say something no one has ever said before; there are mathematical theorems that I discovered and they're mine and forever will be - I was the first one to discover those things and those "tiny changes" are mine (and, trust me, they are tiny). It got me through that period of my life.

But I ended up loving The Winter of Mixed Drinks less, and I somehow missed out on Pedestrian Verse entirely. I picked up a copy of Painting of a Panic Attack in 2017 and really found little in it for me. I'd lost track of Scott's side-projects and didn't discover the excellent Mastersystem album until after his death (more on that another time). I vividly remember scrolling through Twitter one morning at work and seeing the final tweet Scott posted and the ensuing panic from friends and family. It was a (thankfully, so far) unique feeling and one I hope not experience again. Whilst I'd never even met Scott, his music on The Midnight Organ Fight had meant so much to me I was really thrown; I felt particularly helpless, wishing there was something I could but almost certainly being hundreds of miles away from anywhere useful. 

As a big Manics fan, my mind soon drifted onto thoughts of Richey Edwards. When I first heard the Manics, Richey had already been missing for years, but seeing the panic and fear in real time from Scott's loved ones made me think about different it must have been in 1995 without the internet. Two days later, there was a sad ending to Scott's story but it felt like longer - in my mind there was a week between the two events, but maybe that's how time feels like it passes in situations like that. I can't begin to imagine what it was like for Richey's friends and family.

Three paragraphs in and I've not even mentioned this record yet. Before Scott's death, this tribute album was in the works - it's status as a classic album was already established. I wasn't aware how well-loved it was by people other than me, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was universally adored. Perhaps "surprised" is the wrong word - there's no reason to be surprised; it's a huge album. I didn't (and still don't) know most of the names of the artists covering the songs here, but Biffy Clyro, The Twilight Sad and Craig Finn were enough to give me an idea and also draw me in. I remember watching a heart-wrenching video of The Twilight Sad covering Keep Yourself Warm at Primavera Sound shortly after Scott's death (although they cover Floating the Forth here, a song I can only imagine was even harder to manage).

When we first moved into this house, my daughter's room was the only one that we'd decorated and spent much time in, so I kept a record player up there with a small handful of records. This one was up there for a long time and I played it a lot with her, particularly while my wife was in hospital after our second was born. It's not the most appropriate record to play in front of a young child, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't listening to the words. As a result, I have bittersweet memories of these versions of the songs - playing Duplo with my two-year-old, but also thinking about the sad end of Scott's life. The memories felt a world apart from my memories of the original album - academia and going to as many gigs as I could manage in London. A critical but very true statement is that these songs aren't as good as the originals - few add anything to the excellent song-writing of the originals (Craig Finn's cover is one of the better ones, and Biffy's take on The Modern Leper is unusual, but comes together in the end). But I love that I had a chance to reconnect with these songs in a thoroughly different phase of my life and create new memories of them.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, booklet

Tracks: 17

Cost: £25.50 new

Bought: Resident Records website

When: 05/08/19

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: none

Various Artists - Fat Music for Fest People

Fat Wreck Chords compilation cds were a stable of my youth, although I never owned any myself. A bunch of my friends had a few, shared them around and that was how we got into most of the punk bands we knew. Years later I got a copy of Short Music For Short People on vinyl, mostly because the idea of it still amused me and squeezing 101 songs onto one 12" record was equally ridiculous. That compilation was the only one I remember borrowing from a friend when we were at school, but it was my first taster of a lot of bands who would go on to mean a lot to us.

Fast-forward 12-or-so years and I went to Fest for the first time. Fat Wreck Chords had a 10" in countless different colours for sale made for the festival, called Fat Music For Fest People. After picking up our wristbands, Sarah and I both bought a copy from the stall in the registration flea market. In all honestly, I'm not really sure why. I suppose at the start of the weekend, $10 for a record seemed like a bargain, but almost without exception every single album I bought that weekend cost $10. I guess I also wanted to buy it mark my first Fest, wondering if it might become a regular purchase at future Fests; I went once again, but didn't even look to see if there was another issue.

The truth is that I just don't like the bands on Fat Wreck Chords that much, and far too many of them sound identical. I'm now on the fifth song, and if you'd told me that all five of the songs so far had been from the same band I would have believed you. I'd seen Dead to Me and Teenage Bottlerocket that spring supporting The Descendants (at the famously bad Shepherd's Bush show where Milo lost his voice) and been thoroughly bored by them both. Hugh tweeted something along the lines of "if a bomb went off in Shepherd's Bush right now, all of the UK punk scene would be wiped out. But at least Dead to Me would stop playing", which I remember finding amusing.

The second side has a bit more to it - None More Black have a gruff edge and the background "Whoa-ohs" in this song were always going to be a hit for me. Paint it Black bring a bit of hardcore, which is nice. A lot of people I know love that band, but I've never really got into them. I'm sure I'd enjoy them live. I'd seen The Flatliners a few months earlier in Kingston and been underwhelmed by them then. Apparently I saw Old Man Markley and Dillinger Four at Fest that year, but I think both were because I was already in the venue they were playing and wanted to stay there for the band afterwards (Dikembe and Lemuria, respectively). I certainly don't remember much about either.

As samplers go, this hasn't done a great job of making me want to go see the Fat Wreck bands playing Fest that year, but I didn't have a record player with me, so there was no scenario where I'd actually hear this record before the bands played anyway. I don't feel like I missed out on anything, that's for sure.

Format: 10"
Tracks: 10
Cost: £6.20 new
Bought: Fest
When: 28/10/11
Colour: Pink
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Various Artists - The Lost Boys OST

When I was at college a few of my friends were really into skating and BMX-ing (as is probably true of every teenager everywhere, regardless of time or place). Tom and Nick were really into both sports and, along with Hugh, we spent a lot of time at Tom's parents' house watching skate and BMX videos. I always found the flatland BMX bits the most fascinating and eventually bought an old BMX from Nick with the intention of learning how to do some of the cool stuff I'd seen. The notion of understanding where my weight was and how to move it wasn't something I'd figure out until I tried snowboarding many years later, so trying out these BMX tricks usually just involved me falling off the bike a lot. I learned one trick and pretty much gave up there.

In one of those videos - and it's important to note that this was the early-2000's, so YouTube wasn't a thing; these were actual videos - there was a section of someone BMX-ing to Cry Little Sister from the film The Lost Boys. It was nothing like the music I was listening to at the time, but I was crazy into it. That choir! It was perfect. The song is dark and brooding and the layering of the vocals is brilliant. The organ adds to the gothic feel along with all the reverb on the vocals. I know nothing about Gerald McMann, but he had a stroke of genius with this song at least. I can't remember anything about the BMX video but setting anything to this music is a bold move, especially something that is so commonly soundtracked by shitty punk bands, so fair play to them.

I can't remember the order of events - I'd either seen the film before seeing that BMX video or I hadn't. I think I hadn't, so must have looked up the song from the closing credits, researched it on the internet and seen it was from the soundtrack (I'm reluctant to use the verb "google" because at this point in time it probably would have been Yahoo search or even Ask Jeeves - reminiscing about the early days of the internet makes me feel like a grandad). I've watched the movie a good handful of time over the years, and it's a great vampire movie but I certainly don't consider it one of my all time favourite movies. I imagine it's riding the wave of 80's nostalgia really well though - the second song here Lost in the Shadows (The Lost Boys) wouldn't sound out of place in a montage in Stranger Things.

I've just been reading about the soundtrack on Wikipedia and never released how many of these songs were covers - mostly because the originals and people playing them here are largely unknown to me (Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me being an obvious exception, here recorded by Roger Daltrey, who I feel like I should know was in The Who, but they're just not a band I care enough about to store these things away in my mind. My initial thought was a strange mix of James Bonds: Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton. That's not who he is). The feeling isn't consistently "incredibly 80's", in fact Good Times is really upbeat and ends quite far away from a typical 80's sound. The Echo and the Bunnymen cover of People Are Strange doesn't try anything similar.

Every song that appears after Cry Little Sister just makes me wish I was still listening to Cry Little Sister. I've not played this album a huge amount over the years, but it's always a waiting game until that song, then a case of letting side-B play out pretty much out of pity that the songs aren't as memorable or interesting; almost like it's rude to just play the song I want to hear and skip the rest (in case you needed any more clues that I'm not embracing the Spotify-generation). I Still Believe by Tim Cappello has something going for it; it reminds me of Talk Talk a bit, which, having just googled who Tim Cappello is, is probably pretty offensive to Talk Talk.

Anyway, a few years later on Christmas Eve as we headed out for the tradition of getting Christmas-ruiningly-drunk back in Winchester, Hugh gave me this copy of The Lost Boys soundtrack that he'd found in a charity shop that day. It was an unexpected gift, and I appreciated the thought. It was something of a pain carry it around the rest of the evening, but I managed to avoid it getting covered in drinks and it's mostly still in the condition I was given it in. It doesn't get much play, so I'm just going to listen to Cry Little Sister one more time before I put it back away...

Format: 12"
Tracks: 10
Cost: Free second hand
Bought: Gift
When: 24/12/05
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Various Artists - First Kiss

This record came out on Record Store Day in 2013, but I didn't buy a copy until over a year later. I can't remember why it was that I didn't buy a copy in 2013, but it would have been for one of three reasons: Banquet hadn't got any copies in stock; it was in stock but all gone by the time I got into the shop; or I simply forgot to pick up a copy. Given how much stock Banquet get in, it's likely not the first reason and I know what I'm like, so it's quite likely the last.

The main reason I was keen to get a copy was that my friend Matt's band, Among Brothers, was on the compilation and I really like their music. Their EP Homes is the only thing of theirs I have mp3s of, but still gets pretty heavy rotation. The other nine songs were mostly bands I hadn't heard of, or only knew the names because Matt knew them (particularly in the cases of Samoans and Without Maps). At the time I thought I was fairly in touch with a lot of what was going on in the British music scene, but this compilation is proof that I really wasn't - or at least the scenes I knew about were existing in entirely non-overlapping circles with these bands. I'd moved out of Cardiff a few years before this compilation and, I assume, before a lot of these bands had their Cardiff connections, so I moved away assuming the punk scene was all there was.

The compilation is ten songs from ten bands who made up the first ten releases on Jen Long's label, Kissability. It open with one of the weaker songs in my opinion - DZ Deathrays' The Mess Up which doesn't do as much as I keep thinking it's going to. Cut Ribbons compare themselves to Deftones, which nearly comes through in the guitars, but Mew is a much more obvious comparison in my mind. It's nice and I imagine they'd be good to watch live. The Among Brothers song, Keep, is unmistakably them, but sounds quite different - as ever, they fit a lot into a short song. It lacks any central theme to hold it together, which was also my criticism of the 7" they released. They're followed by Without Maps, whose math-rock is much more to my liking, and reminds me of a lot of bands I've enjoyed over the years, including Grown Ups, a band Matt got me into. Thumpers close the record out nicely with Velveteen - apparently they released an album on Sub Pop, which is pretty impressive.

Anyway, a year after RSD13 this record did find it's way into my collection. I was in Manchester to see Neutral Milk Hotel with my friend Aled and went record shopping during the day. Piccadilly Records (a great record shop with some really interesting stock) still had at least one copy in their shelves, and had been sat there for over a year. I was pleased to finally add it my collection, so included it in the armful of records I was buying that day (as an added bonus, it was reduced to £5). The sleeve is numbered (#22/100) and has what I think might be an actual lipstick kiss in the corner. The insert looks like it was supposed to chopped about an inch shorter in each direction, or it's possibly intentional that all the print/layout stuff is left around the edge. It didn't come with a download code, so it's not had very many plays at all, which is a shame. I'm not sure I would have become a huge fan of any of the bands had I listened to the songs many more times, but it would have been nice to feel more in touch with a clearly active part of the UK music scene.

Format: 12" white label, insert, numbered 22/100
Tracks: 10
Cost: £5 new
Bought: Piccadilly Records, Manchester
When: 18/05/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: None

Various Artists - Load Rocks [Promo]

Oh dear. Few things highlight the horrible pinnacle that nu-metal reached as shameless hip-hop/metal crossovers like this album. So you fully understand the grim extent of it, this record contains RHCP-stealing Crazy Town (a band everyone had blissfully forgotten about), Sevendust with Xhibit, Butch Vig for some reason, Black Sabbath trying to stay relevant by working with Wu-Tang, otherwise respectable Sick of it All with Mobb Deep, and the boy band of the era, Incubus.

Anyone who bought this album when they were a teenager (because no one else bought it) will notice that I've only listed the second half of the album. That's because I only have the second LP (and thus I've never been treated to what a collaboration between System of a Down and Wu-Tang sounds like). I bought this in a second hand record shop in Reading. I think, looking back, they might have had both discs there, but for sale separately. At the time, I thought it was the same LP twice, but it makes more sense that it was both LPs on their own. That said, this one has a sticker over the words "side C" and "side D", which was what made me notice when I got home that I only had one disc. Neither had the original sleeve, just the words "Loud Rocks Sampler" in biro on the corner. I paid £2 for this record, and I think at some point I might have had £2-worth of fun from it.

That fun, if any, feels like it must have been a very long time ago. This record has not aged well. Side C is appalling - Crazy Town and Sevendust you expect that from (the smooth chorus on the Sevendust song is cringe-worthy), but Butch Vig I expected better things from. He produced Nevermind and Siamese Dream for Christ's sake. It sounds like Asian Dub Foundation went horribly, horribly wrong. I'm just going to keep on pretending that song didn't happen.

I lied above when I said Black Sabbath were involved, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward dodged a bullet by not putting their name to it. I have a lot of time for the first two Black Sabbath albums, and I've greatly enjoyed them every time I've seen them, but that's because they only really play songs from the 70's, which everyone agrees is the best idea. This song doesn't work well. SOIA's Lou Koller's vocals are the only highlight of the whole record, and that's only because they're at such odds to everything else around it. Annoyingly, the chorus is the only place he sings and the transition between it and the verse is jarring. It's almost like they couldn't be bothered to write the transition. Who can blame them? The second the Incubus song starts you just want them to fuck off; such a clusterfuck of pop, rap and funk. Writing this, I'm very tempted to take the needle off the record, but that's against what I started the blog to do. I mean, it must be over soon, they can't stretch this shit out that far, surely? Still going, but this break surely means we're at least half way? Still going. Urgh, another chorus. The outro seems to go on forever. Oh, thank god. It's over.

Final critical thing to say about this album - have you seen the actual cover? It's fucking terrible. I'm lucky that mine just has a white sleeve. Record label execs in the late 90's/early 2000's were really taking the piss on many levels.

Format: 12", promo

Tracks: 7

Cost: £2 second hand

Bought: Reading

When: 27/12/02

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Various Artists - Earache:Nextgen98 Tour - The Singles

This is a funny one. I knew that one of the last records Dub War released was a 7" featuring a song I hadn't heard called Dreams and Illusions backed with a string version of Silencer. When I wrote about Wrong Side of Beautiful, I ranted and raved a lot about how much I loved Silencer. Anyone who's read this blog before will know that I'm also a sucker for classical instruments in rock music, so this 7" was something I very keenly wanted to hear. However, I never saw it come up on eBay, so after a while I did a bit more hunting. I went on the Earache website and noticed, to my great surprise, that they were still selling it seven years after it came out. Not only that, but they had the whole series of records it belonged to for less than a fiver (the text etched into the b-side of the Dub War 7" seeming very ironic - see below). I excitedly purchased.

A bit of history: in 1998 Earache put on a tour of five bands called the Nextgen98 Tour. Earache was more of a metal label, but I think they were trying to edge into the increasingly popular nu-metal scene. This wasn't only obvious from the music of the bands featured, but by the comical late-90's cover-art. Anyway, they put out a 7" by each band each week in December, with the tour starting the following January. The first record came with a box to keep them all in.

Despite the largely terrible music included, there are a lot of thing about this project that I like: the whole idea of releasing a series of 7"s is one that all record collectors love, but even more-so when you can collect them into a nice boxset. It's also a great way of encouraging people to actually buy the whole lot. One of the greatest things here is the way that the art on each sleeve makes up part of the final picture (check the pictures below). It's not quite as cool as Les Savy Fav's Inches project, but pre-dates it by a few years. It's a shame the picture isn't more interesting, but I love the idea. I only have one other 7" boxset, and I'm constantly disappointed by the plain white sleeves inside and the fact they didn't do something similar.

So on to the bands. Janus Stark have very little going for them, and Pulkas are mildly more interesting. Misery Loves Co were the only band other than Dub War who I'd heard before (possibly on a Kerrang! cd). They were slightly sludgier and heavier, and I enjoyed that. Even now the a-side is quite listenable. The b-side is a remix and really does little for me. Dub War's Dreams and Illusions sounds like where they would have gone had there been a third album; much like a lot of Wrong Side of Beautiful, it's a much smoother, softer affair - more raggae than ragga. The strings version of Silencer is suitably dramatic, but just strings and vocals. It's nice, not as good as the original. I like what it adds, but I think I'd have preferred a middle ground - strings with some guitars. Benji's vocals still soar towards the end and it just shows that his vocals can be backed by pretty much any genre. The final 7" is by Ultraviolence, who sound like a shit Prodigy. Their b-side is a cover of Sabbath's Paranoid, and it is dreadful. Truly terrible.

Despite the vast majority of the music on it, there are a lot of things I like about this boxset, and it was definitely worth the money for the Dub War record alone.

Format: five 7" boxset
Tracks: 10
Cost: £4.64 new
Bought: Earache Records website
When: 20/04/05
Colour: Black
Etching: see below
mp3s: no

Etchings:
Record 1, Side A: "Only four more to go"
Record 1, Side B: "Same channel next week is Pulkas"
Record 2, Side A: "Serious collector, eh?"
Record 2, Side B: "Don't miss Misery on Monday"
Record 3, Side A: "Over half way there now"
Record 3, Side B: "Next instalment ... Dub War"
Record 4, Side A: "Only one more to go"
Record 4, Side B: "It'll be worth stacks in years"
Record 5, Side A: "You've got the set"
Record 5, Side B: "Now see the show"

Various Artists - The Darlington Sessions #1 - Roo Pescod, Kelly Kemp and Giles Bidder

This record got announced around Christmas I think (possibly even Christmas Day - all the days around Christmas tend to become a festive blur) and I was pretty excited by the prospect of it. All three of the musicians here appear in my record collection in other places - Roo plays in Bangers, Giles plays in Great Cynics, and Kelly played on one of my all-time favourite 7"s - so I knew it would be pretty good.

The theme of the record is that the three of them recorded some songs over an apparently drunken weekend in the eponymous (had to look that word up to make sure I'm using it right; not entirely sure I am) Darlington House along with some other familiar names from the UK punk-rock scene. It's a great idea; I love the fact these bands get the chance to hang out and record together. It worked pretty well on the 7" I mentioned above and it works well here too. I guess a good description would be that it's some sort of cross between a collaborative Daytrotter Session and the Revival Tour (so much so, they went off on the Survival Tour, which I sadly missed because I was away).

The record certainly lived up to my expectations, although I was gutted when it arrived to see that the record had knifed its way through the top of the sleeve in transit. It's a one-sided vinyl, so its edges are that bit sharper than a regular record. I don't ever plan to sell any of my records, but I like them to be in nice condition anyway. Still, a minor thing in the grand scheme of things. One thing that works really well on the record is that the three of them have very different voices, so when they lend backing vocals to each other's songs, it sounds great.

My favourite of the nine songs has to be Under the Table by Roo, which consists of just a bass guitar, Roo's vocals and Kelly singing "ba ba ba-ba". It reminds me of Don't by Dinosaur Jr in the fact they both sound so different to the other songs on the album; Dinosaur Jr's album of lo-fi, indie rock ends with a brutal, industrial wall of noise and here, after eight songs of nice, mostly-acoustic songs, we get a dirty bass line and particularly-gruff vocals (I always feel like a prick calling bass "dirty" but it somehow always seems the most appropriate word). Other highlights are Giles' Harrow Adam, Roo's Hammer Whammer and Kelly and Roo's Banished to the Gods.

I'm glad this is called The Darlington Sessions #1, because that implies there'll be more in this series, and I'm very excited to see and hear whatever may come from future sessions.


Format: one-sided 12", insert
Tracks: 9
Cost: £10.50 new
Bought: Internet
When: 16/02/13
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Various Artists - Alpha Motherfuckers - A Tribute to Turbonegro

The very first time I heard Turbonegro was at Roskilde Festival in 2005. They were playing in the middle of the afternoon on the Orange Stage and we sat towards the back, watched them and were suitably amazed. I'd heard the name and seen pictures of them, but really knew nothing about them until then. That said, they only spoke to the crowd in Norwegian so some aspects of what made Turbo such a great live band were lost on us that day.

Nine months later I was in the excellent Real Groovy record store in Auckland at the end of a two-week trip around New Zealand and found this double LP tribute to Turbonegro. I'd been meaning to get into them ever since that afternoon in Denmark and this seemed like the perfect opportunity - a bunch of bands I liked (Hot Water Music, Therapy?, Supersuckers, QOTSA, Zeke) and even more that I hadn't heard of covering a whole load of Turbonegro songs. I added it to the small collection of records and cds I was buying and checked out. After a busy two weeks travelling around, everyone else I was with spent the day exploring Auckland but I'd had enough of being a tourist and spent the whole afternoon in that one record shop. I had a great time.

Anyway, the record is brilliant, although in places I think it's more to do with the songs than the bands playing them. I can't play any instruments, but I imagine it's hard to play Turbonegro songs without sounding like Turbonegro. And why would you want to? Highlights include Nashville Pussy taking on Age of Pamparius, Queens' cover of Back to Dungaree High (I was always more of a fan of Nick Olivieri's vocals) and Get it On by Supersuckers (it would be a few years before I noticed the Alice Cooper reference at the end). Lowlights have to be Him and Toby Dammit, but one of those was to be expected.

A particular mention goes to Bela B and his cover of Are You Ready For Some Darkness? I'd been travelling around with a bunch of friends I'd met at university, including a German girl called Nadine. She'd been telling me about this band called Die Ärzte who are hugely famous if you've ever been a teenager in Germany and feature an incredibly energetic singing drummer called Bela B. After I bought this album she told me about how she didn't really get or like Turbonegro, only to then be very impressed that Bela B had contributed a song. As a side note, I ended up going to see Die Ärzte with her a few years later and they were really impressive. What was almost more impressive was how mad everyone went for them and how a forty-year-old man could stand up drumming and singing for nearly two hours straight.

One of the really nice things about this record is the insert with a few words from each band about how great Turbonegro are, a rant from Hank comparing himself to Jesus and Luke Skywalker and great quotes like "Turbonegro wore Levi's Denim or they wore nothing at all". I hadn't realised Turbo had broken up and got back together again until after I bought this record, so I was a little confused by all the comments about them being gone. The rave reviews from bands like Therapy? and HWM music furthered my idea that Turbo were a band worth getting excited about. I also began to understand all the Turbojugend jackets I'd seen everyone wearing at Roskilde.

So over the following months and years I picked up a bunch more of Turbonegro's back-catalogue (including the excellent Ass Cobra I wrote about in December). I also ended up seeing them again that summer in Belgium (I apologise for how shamelessly international this story has been) and they blew me away even more-so. Their set was wedged between Beck (featuring mini-Beck puppets; more on this another time) and Radiohead and I had a great four hours, running between stages trying to catch as much of all three as possible (I bumped into a friend between Turbo and Radiohead who couldn't understand a word I was saying because I was so excited). Hank addressed the crowd in English and it turns out he is hilarious as well as a great front-man. Whilst I was introduced to Turbo a year beforehand, my favourite memory of them is in that sweaty tent that night throwing myself around to Get in On.


Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, insert, poster
Tracks: 23
Cost: £8.14 new
Bought: Real Groovy, Auckland
When: 20/04/06
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Various Artists - Short Music For Short People

This is hands down the most ridiculous record I own. For those unfamiliar with it, Short Music for Short People is a Fat Wreck Chords compilation (a variation on the Fat Music for Fat People series) containing 101 songs by 101 bands each about 30-seconds long and crammed into 50 minutes. Pretty much every US punk band who had made a name for themselves in the late-90's (and plenty who hadn't, plus some non-US bands) appeared either with an album track, or a specially recorded song. They're all here, and I'll leave it to you to check the pictures below or the Wikipedia page to confirm that.

When I was 16 my friends Tom and Nick both had a copy of this on cd, and I remember thinking it was a pretty ridiculous but amusing idea at the time. On cd the format just about works - cds are limited to 99 tracks so the last three ran together as one track. Most importantly, if there's a song you like, you can easily check what number you're on and figure out who you're listening to. That's not an option on vinyl. The songs are so tightly crammed onto the two sides that there's no space for even one gap in the grooves, let alone 50 per side.

Both one of the best and worst things about this album was the huge number of bands it exposed us to. On one hand, we heard songs by bands like Black Flag and The Descendants but, on the other, they were only 30-seconds long so hardly the best example of their music. In fact, I think it's safe to say that none of the bands here really have the opportunity to show off their best side (except maybe Spazz, to whom 30-seconds is a long song) so I ended up ignoring a lot of these bands for a while for being "Short Music for Short People bands", rather than exploring properly. Twelve years later, I know a lot of these bands much better and it seems like shame that Like a Fish in Water had to be my introduction to The Bouncing Souls, for example.

Anyway, shortly before returning to Canberra for my second semester there, I found this LP in JB-Hifi in Sydney. I remembered how ridiculous it was, but also the good times we had listening to it at Tom's house and thought it would be a nice album to have on vinyl, so decided to pick it up (they also had a Supersuckers record on glow-in-the-dark vinyl that I still regret not buying). The excellent exchange rate meant it was only £6.90 and I had a nice chat with the sales guy about the album (he hadn't heard it, but wanted a copy himself). The cd booklet is included in a slightly larger 8"x8" size, which is a nice touch (and pretty much the only way to keep up with the songs). Each band gets a quarter of a page for whatever info they want to include.

I don't play this album a great deal, but it's format doesn't really lend itself to regular plays, especially not as an adult. There are highlights though, and my personal favourites are You Don't Know Shit by Youth Brigade, Fishfuck by Gwar (although mostly for comedy value) and Blatty (Human Egg) by Sick of it All.


Format: 12", 8"x8" booklet
Tracks: 101
Cost: £6.90 new
Bought: JB-Hifi, Sydney
When: 09/02/06
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Various Artists - I'm Not There OST

I've been putting off writing about this record for ages, mostly because it's about 12 hours long. The album is the soundtrack to a Bob Dylan biopic named after a song of his, I'm Not There, and features some fairly A-list names covering Dylan songs spread over four discs.

It should be said that I'm not a huge fan of Bob Dylan. That's not to say I don't like him, I think he has some great songs, but I'm not a massive fan. The problem I have with Dylan is just that he's written so much music I don't know where to begin. I have two compilations (a 5-LP boxset I got cheaply in New Zealand, and the recent 3-CD boxset that Fopp were shifting for £6) but both are so expansive I get a bit bored. I know I should just buy an album and enjoy him for just two sides of a record, but where to start? Also, I feel like I've really tried; I've bought his music and spent hours listening to it. I've even seen him live (at Roskilde a few years back), although I won't go into detail about how shit he was, because it seems rude given how influential he is, and how old he is. Basically, I feel I've put the effort in, and now I'm going to re-focus that energy elsewhere and hopefully be more rewarded.

Anyway, I bought this one because the names appearing on it interested me. It was during the Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year and they had reduced the price because the corner was slightly damaged (surely a factor of the record company stuffing four records into a single sleeve), although it's worth noting that it's way less damaged than some records I've seen in other less-lovely record shops for full price. I don't spin it very often, but it's not a bad record. There are certainly some great tunes, but also plenty that are a little beige. One success story was that it led me to discover Sufjan Stevens, an artist I was very excited to find out about. Other highlights are Stephen Malkmus' take on Ballad of a Thin Man, and Mark Lanegan's and Willie Nelson's songs. It was nice to hear another take on Moonshiner because I'm used to Chuck Ragan's Rumbleseat version, and Antony and The Johnsons' cover of Knockin' on Heaven's Door is worth a listen too.


Format: 4x12", picture sleeves
Tracks: 33
Cost: £16 new
Bought: Spillers
When: 09/07/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no