When some brave soul finally decides to write the book on deconstructionist rock n’ roll, it seems that U.S. Maple may finally get the attention they so rightly deserve. I’m not sure how lucrative this particular endeavor would prove, but it’s possible that authors are running out of genres to highlight in their writing. Whatever the case, until this book gets published, I assume the Windy City quartet will unfortunately remain shrouded in a cloud of noise rock obscurity. Considering I currently find myself in a position of unlimited power and influence here at the bloglin, I figured I could provide the band some much-needed ink, and quickly highlight their killer debut album.

According to the band’s now defunct website, members of the group had claimed that they sought to “erase Rock and Roll from their collective minds” and  ”devise a working method for reorganizing the genre, keeping only what they felt were its most important core elements” when forming up. While I’m not sure exactly what they were getting at here, or whether or not they ever actually ended up reaching their supposed goal, I’m relatively certain of one fact. The process of listening to Long Hair in Three Stages within the confines of my own bedroom almost always makes me spaz out and throw punches into thin air (aiming at nothing in particular).

As far as I’m concerned, there may be no better litmus test, when it comes to judging the validity of a rock record, than to see what kind of reaction it elicits when taking a listen in private. Generally if something violent happens, I think it’s working. While the material found throughout Long Hair may come off as slightly less aggressive or heavy-handed than some of the more punk influenced noise records that were dropping in the mid-90′s, one could still certainly throw a hissy fit to this stuff. Basically, you don’t need to own a closet-full of black t-shirts, and crave the grime of a mosh pit to really get U.S. Maple… You probably have to be a pretty weird dude though.

Long Hair in Three Stages was the direct result of a melding of two members from the group Shorty, and two members from the band Mercury Players. Al Johnson, Marc Shippy, Todd Rittman, and Adam Vita all came into contact at DeKalb’s Northern Illinois University at some point in the 90′s, and contrived the mission statement that I had described earlier in the text. Their first record was put out by the small label Skin Graft, and was produced by Chicago indie-rock demigod Jim O’Rourke. If you’re not in the know, O’Rourke is best bros with Jeff Tweedy, cut his teeth in the seminal post-rock outfit Gastr Del Sol with David Grubbs, and was also an on-again-off-again member of Sonic Youth for a long period of time throughout the aughts. As you could imagine, the dude’s involvement in the recording process added a higher pedigree, as well as little bit of gravitas to the first LP of this newly hatched band.

Anyway, I get the feeling that Long Hair may have initially slipped through the cracks because it never exclusively appealed to a single fan base. U.S. Maple certainly didn’t embody the delicacy or deliberate nature of a group like Slint, and they were also creating sounds that were far more strange and avant-garde than anything Thurston Moore and the gang were releasing at the same time. I suppose the gibberish spouting band could be compared to a man without a country. With any luck, however, the music-headz of this digital age we currently find ourselves immersed in will wise up to these weirdos, and pick up the baton.

U.S. Maple – Long Hair In Three Stages

It seems that every time I think I’ve started to scrape the bottom of the Krautrock barrel, an album happens to fly out of left field, that thumps me on the dome. For every NEU! or Faust  record you may have played out over the years, I’m sure there’s an obscure Supersempfft album that’s looming just around the bend, awaiting your attention. In the most recent case of this sort of German sneak attack, I stumbled onto a record by a pair of synthesizer dweebs who made the brave (or perhaps ill-conceived) decision of naming themselves You. Luckily, I rarely judge a band’s merit on how easily their name can be searched on Google, so I was actually forced to listen to their second album entitled Time Code.

There were a few characteristics contained within the album that immediately surfaced upon a couple of listens. Firstly, Time Code wears it’s Germaness on its sleeve, and never apologizes for it. Some might regard this as a knock on the record, but I fucking love this kind of stuff. I’ve been jamming in my bedroom on my Squire Strat to “Rainy Day Sunshine Girl” since high school brah! Anyway, I can best describe the sound found on Time Code by saying that it’s A. slightly less human-sounding than a Cluster record, B. less robot-y than a Kraftwerk record, and C. slightly less ambient-sounding than a Tangerine Dream album… I realize this is a reductionist method to describing music, but I think it’s the best way to talk about You.

I also found out rather quickly that there were no physical instruments to be heard throughout each of the tracks on the record. Upon losing their drummer Harald Grosskopf, and guitar player Uli Weber before the production of Time Code, the remaining two You members Udo Hanten and Albin Meskes decided to go about the recording process themselves. This turn of events can account for the synth-heavy sound on the album, and more obviously, the lack of any human percussion or guitar playing. Again, while this factor might be viewed as a detriment by some listeners, the pair made the most of their new slimmed-down line up here. Whatever negatives you may have to say surrounding these dudes, you must admit they program a pretty mean keyboard.

An early performance (pre-Time Code) at Art & Action Gallery.

The electronic sound You come away with on Time Code can be described as both pretty-sounding as well as a bit doom-laden. The synthesizers never sound the least-bit murky on any of the tracks, which affords Udo and Aldin the ability to tweak the tone of a particular tune at the drop of hat. They exercise this power in songs that range from uplifting (such as “Metallique”), to numbers on the opposite end of the moody spectrum (like “Deep Range”). “Future-Past” runs the full gamut of emotion, as it begins it dark territory, before poking its head out through the clouds, just to return into dreadful terrain once more. It seems that You’s rendering of tone could be their greatest asset as a duo.

This sophomore release was initially put out in 1983 by Rock City Records, but is just now being reissued by Bureau B along with their first album Electric Day. If you are new to the late-70′s/early-80′s world of German rock, there are probably a few touchstone records you might want to look into before trying this one out (see: Ege Bamyasi). Without sounding too condescending, if you find yourself to be a XXJFG enthusiast, Time Code will probably land right in your wheelhouse. You’ll probably also dig it if you like smoking grass, and getting spooked-out.

Time Code samples: Live Line/ Deep Range / Future Past / Zone Black by Bureau B

We’re altering the Digging for Fire format starting with this entry. Instead of solely focusing on out of print or forgotten records of the past, we want to start re-introducing and reexamining albums. Be they classics or overlooked gems, the new focus of Digging For Fire is to aquatint our readers, particularly our younger ones with albums we feel are essential listening.

Unfortunately we won’t always be posting downloads any longer as some of these releases are very much still in print. But you guys are all clever and know how to use the internet right? – My Pal the Crook

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While there were certainly more obscure records to speak of, when referring to the short list of albums I compiled to write about for my inaugural Digging For Fire post, none meant more to me personally than Alien Lanes. Often times you might stumble into a particular album at a fitting time in your life, and finding GBV early on in my college days was nothing if not apropos. It’s almost as if some undefinable strand contained within the Alien Lanes genome lends itself to slamming a Bud heavy while washing piles of crusty dishes in a dive apartment. At the expense of getting overly sentimental, it feels a little like I met Alien Lanes during my very first syllabus week, and really never looked back over the subsequent four years… well, four and a half years actually.

If you’re not in the know, GBV is/was comprised of a rotating  cast of Beatles-0bsessed schlubs, jocks and high school teachers, all hailing from the bustling metropolis of  Dayton Ohio. Popping up somewhere toward the middle portion of the Guided by Voices catalog, Alien Lanes was the first official record the dudes put out as members of the now-prestigious Matador Records stable and ocnsidere dtheir last album with their “classic lineup.” Front man, and group auteur, Robert Pollard, was reportedly given a five-figure sum by the NY indie label to produce the LP, but opted instead to fill the album with a collection of bizarre home-recorded ditties, done on the cheap. Whether Pollard aimed to retain the group’s signature home-grown lo-fi sound here, or simply just wanted to save cash to pay off an astronomical bar tab, is really up for debate at this point.

What’s clear, however, is that the crew (whose chief songwriters consisted of Pollard and Tobin Sprout) walked away with a record that impressively manages to sustain steam for 28 tracks, while still properly encapsulating the band’s sound. Alien Lanes could be looked at as a total mess in a lot of ways, but should also be presented the distinction of GBV’s greatest triumph. For modern-day youngsters weaned on Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit, the album could come of sounding a little archaic, or even boring. I think the record manages a feat no Shit-Gaze act has yet to accomplish though, which is to say, it has kept me coming back for more and more listens over time. If nothing else, Alien Lanes is catchy as hell.

I have a friend who bought the concert film documenting what was at the time thought to be GBV’s farewell show. She claimed to be disappointed with the footage and overall quality of the thing, citing how drunk all the band members became as the show progressed.  While I can understand her stance on the matter in some ways, I also think she’s missing the point here a little bit. The very fact that these middle-aged fellas are still wheeling out (literal) piss and puke buckets as stage fixtures is one of the reasons twenty-something year old dudes look to Pollard and the gang as kindred spirits. They’re still doing it man!

If this short piece reaches a single dopey high school or college meat head, who’s uneducated in the mystical ways of Bob Pollard, and views Dave Matthews as the be-all end-all, then I’ll have done my job. Give the album a spin, and you’ll be shouting about your “Valuable Hunting Knife” before you know it. Take my word on this one, I’ve already fallen into this vicious trap.

I recently finished Sara Marcus’ great book on the 90s Riot Grrrl scene, Girls to the Front and keeping shit on a Pacific Northwestern tip, I went right into Greg Prato’s Grunge Is Dead, an oral history of the Seattle scene. I’m a little too early into this one to cast an opinion on if it’s a worthwhile read, but it’s done in the vein of Please Kill Me, which is taking anecdotal accounts and reflections on different periods/bands/etc,etc, from people who where there and ordering them in a chronological fashion. It ultimately leads to a lot of contradictory statements but it’s in those grey areas that you start getting a real picture of the time which I’ve always felt was an excellent way to write about a music scene.

Grunge Is Dead isn’t the first book to do this with the Seattle music scene. Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story by Clark Humphrey came out some 15 years ago and I burned through it one evening. It was a fantastic account of the area and its bands that amongst a smattering of incredible vintage flyers and images highlighted all sorts of great bands from the area/time that mostly went nowhere. And while both talk in detail about the local bands that would later influence those major players of the late 80s/90s; Loser focused more on Seattle’s (and its surrounding areas) burgeoning underground scene (K records, The Mentors, Melvins), Grunge Is Dead shines its attention on those bands the stories of the bands that would gain national attention (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains).

TKO is one of those bands touched upon in both books early chapters. One of Seattle’s better known bands in the late 70s and early 80s, they received some national attention on the metal circuit but never really broke out beyond that localized fame in the U.S.

I’d call TKO more “Cock Rock” than Hair Metal, there’s equal parts Kiss, Van Halen (who they toured with at one point), Twisted Sister and some NWOBHM in their sound. Did anything really set them apart from the other hundreds similar bands at the time? No not really, but they still wrote some pretty catchy fist pumping anthems. Sometimes fat riffs and a tight melody can trump originality.

They released their first album, Let It Roll in 1979 followed by In Your Face in 1984. In Your Face was actually completed in 1981 but sat shelved for years for whatever reason until Combat Records finally released it. Let It Roll has more of a bluesier edge that leans heavily on an early Alice Copper influence, while In Your Face is just full on glammy “Cock Rock.” It’s really the better of the two albums by far a margin, and I’m sure it still pains the band to think what could have been had it only come out in 1981 instead of 1984 when bands like TKO where becoming a dime a dozen.

And while not the most original of acts that doesn’t mean TKO wasn’t influential. While you’re air-guitaring along with the songs you’d have to be deaf to not hear TKO’s influence on Mother Love Bone and the guitar playing of Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready and Alice In Chains’ Layne Staley.

If you’re a fan of late 70s and early 80s glam, this album is an incredible forgotten gem. Across its ten tracks, there are some definite standouts (“I Wanna Fight,” “Give Into the Night”), but there also really no bad songs. It’s a run around the house air guitarist album…the sort of album you’ll be singing along with even on your first listen.

TKO – In Your Face (1984)

I’m sure most of you by now have give My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a listen…or ten. I’m going to leave to our own Ray Destroyer to put the Bloglin’s final word on the album (hopefully by tomorrow morning) but I will say I was thoroughly impressed and entertained. It also mad me want to on a Digging For Fire post on Kanye. Let me take you back to a time before Kanye was larger than life and bigger than Hip Hop. Back before he was Yeezy and just The Louis Vuitton Don, a producer riding shotgun to Jay-Z.

Kon the Louis Vuitton Don (along with Get Well Soon and I’m Good…) was one Kanye’s first official unofficial mixtape to start showing up around 2003 after Kanye’s near fatal car accident. While most of these were mainly promotional push (like G.O.O.D. Fridays) for his upcoming solo debut, The College Drop Out, they were also meant a s a means to have Hip Hop fans grow more accustomed to Kanye West the rapper, and not just the producer. Up until then for the casual fan, “Through the Wire,” Twista’s “Slow Jamz” and that excellent remix of Talib Kweli’s “Get By” were probably Kanye’s only forays into emceeing they may have heard.

Kon the Louis Vuitton Don is full of remixes, freestyles, at the time unreleased tracks and familiar tracks featuring the likes of Ol Dirty Bastard, 50 cent, Jay-Z, Consequence, GLC and a whole host of other guests. These tracks are all part of the push that helped create Kanye West, the Pop Star and move him away from merely being known as “Jay-Z’s producer.”

This as it’s a pretty great mixtape on it’s own, but the real reason I through it up here is because it serves as a great way yo examine who Kanye West was and now is on the eve the release of what I’m fairly certain will become known as his definitive album. Enjoy!

Kanye West – Kon the Louis Vuitton Don

Look at those cool ass Germans! J.G.-39  AKA Jürgen Gleue and C.H.-39 AKA Christian Henjes made the duo 39 Clocks and my recent post about the recently unearthed and released 90s solo album Jürgen Gleue under the moniker Phantom Payn Days made for the perfect lead up to another edition of Digging For Fire.

39 Clocks were a German band that mostly has gone ignored even by rabid enthusiasts of all bands obscure and from the 80s. Unlike most of the angular, noisy and rhythmic Neue Deutsche Welle scene coming out of German;’s underground at the time, 39 Clocks were much more Psychedelic in nature basing their sound around, guitar and organ these guys had much more in common with the Velvet Underground and  Silver Apples than say D.A.F.

Formed in the late 70s, 39 Clocks were known for their avante-garde (and sometimes dangerous) performances and generally causing countless dollars in damage to venues gracious enough to give them a show. The duo appeared to really relish getting under the skin of Germany’s underground community and wrote many of their songs with a theme of romanticism and youthful rebellion. I’d like to imagine these guys played apart in influencing Spacemen 3 as you can hear the similarities between the two sounds, but who the hell knows if the Spacemen 3 ever even heard 39 Clocks when they were forming.

13 More Songs of Protest was the duos final album, released in 1987. It’s also their only album not to see some sort of reissue. The one very curious thing about the album is that it’s only 11 tracks long yet called 13 More Songs… I have no clue why that is. I generally think if you’re a fan of the Nuggets compilation you’re going to find a lot to like with 39 Clocks. Actualli I think even fans of Jesus & Mary Chain and that sort of early shoegazery psych will find a lot to love here as well.

Once you get through this you should really go grab De Stijl’s excellent compilation from the band called Zoned. It’s a perfect cross section of everything that made this band so good and influential across their albums and singles.

39 Clocks – 13 More Songs of Protest

Wow, look what’s back! I know, I know it’s been almost two months since my last installment of Digging For Fire. Anyway… Our recent review of Balam Acab’s EP, See Birds mentioned how Alex Koone (AKA Balam Acab) scours the internet for sounds and samples which he then manipulates into constructing his own music. That bit reminded me of the godfathers of plunderphonics… Negativland. And while Negativland and Balam Acab have nothing in common in sound, their method in creating their music has much in common.

The anarcho yuckster sound collage collective known as Negativland got started in The Bay Area in the late 70s. They constructed albums built mostly from found samples along with their own musical contributions. Many of their albums would center around a theme, but as a whole you could say Negativland’s overarching theme was unraveling the fabric of most social norms,”the establishment” and mass media with their trademark snarky humor.

And while Negativland may be one of the most original bands to emerge from the 80s, their biggest claim to fame was a very public legal battle with Island Records and U2 over their EP of the same name which basically lampooned U2s hit “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, which featured a slew of hilarious profane laden behind-the-scenes rants by Casey Kasem. Not surprisingly, this whole incident eventually lead Negativland down the road of becoming champions for “fair use” rights when it came to sampling, eventually penning Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2.

In an attempt to help you better grasp Negativland you should watch this 1980s news clip about how Negativland’s “Christianity is Stupid”  off of Escape From Noise was being blamed for the murders of David Brom. Now the only reason Negativland was ever even blamed for this is becaus ethey themselves issued a press release stating that were being prevented from touring by “Federal Authority Dick Jordan” because their song “Christianity Is Stupid” was the inspiration for David Brom to kill his family. This of course was complete B.S. So why did Negativland do it? Probably for shits and giggles and to show how easily it is to control the media as evidenced by the above news clip. This whole event would then inspire their next album, Helter Stupid.

Negativland have an absolute wealth of recorded material that they have released in their 30 some years of existence. I’m sure for a novice their catalog of material could very intimidating and figuring out where to start a bit of a challenge. Escape From Noise, originally released in 1987 was one of the albums that first brought the band some notoriety and is a perfect starting point for a new fan. Give it a listen, if your tastes tend to veer towards the experimental if eve just slightly I think you’ll be hard pressed to not find this enjoyable and at the very least entertaining. And if you enjoy Escape From Noise perhaps you should then also check out some other favorites of mine like Helter Stupid (1989), The Guns EP (1992) and Dispepsi (1997).

Negativland – Escape From Noise

How about some Summer schmaltz?

Magazine 60 were a French trio making Italo Disco that were active in the early to mid-eighties and are known best for this single “Don Quichotte (No Estan Aqui)” which is one sugary fun time on the dance floor. It’s so of a time and so impossible to resist. It’s as cute as  song can get without totally making you sick. A perfect balance of groove and cheesiness, like most great Italo Disco.

Magazine 60 released two full lengths in their career, a self-titled debut (1981) and Costa Del Sol (1985) from which “Don Quichotte (No Estan Aqui)” is from. I opted doing this Digging for Fire focusing only on the 12″ for two of the album’s the tracks rather than the whole album because truthfully these are really all the Magazine 60 most people will ever need.

Here’s Magazine 60 performing “Don Quichotte” live on some European television show back in 1985… I use the term performing very loosely because they’re more thank likely just lip-syncing. But look how much fun they’re having? Drop this in your Summer playlist and I guarantee a good time for all!

Most of Costa Del Sol is either way too sappy or just a bad redundancy in the “Don Quichotte” model. Follow up single “Rendez-Vous Sur La Costa Del Sol” is as close as they get to another “Don Quichotte” which is why I have also included it in the download. If you give a quick listen to both B-sides you’ll quickly get a taste for what the rest of Costa Del Sol is mostly like and if you can stomach another 5 or so tracks like that then by all means hunt it down.

Magazine 60 – Don Quichotte & Rendez-Vous Sur La Costa Del Sol 12″

In honor of The Stone’s remastered re-release of a deluxe edition of Exile on Main St. I thought I’d do a Digging For Fire tribute for the album featuring another artist currently getting some much deserved love with re-releases, Jon Spencer. Arguably the greatest Pigfuck band of all time covers arguably the greatest Stones album of all time in it’s entirety…a pretty awesome concept when you think about it.

Originally released in 1986 as a cassette edition of 550, this album cover was actually Pussy Galore’s first full length to the world and their first since settling in New York City from Washington DC. Why the hell did Pussy Galore decide to cover Exile on Main St.? I honestly have no clue… but the Stones are an obvious influence on Jon Spencer and it just fit the band’s whole trashy, confrontational, roots rock aesthetic. Plus it made for a pretty awesome novelty and befitting Pussy Galore’s reputation, this was a pretty controversial and bold move. I suppose some lowly, trashy noise band covering one of rock’s canonical releases will get people riled up… be it punks or rock purists.

As with all Pussy Galore releases, the tape was recorded like absolute shit! I wouldn’t be shocked if the whole thing wasn’t done live in studio with a tape-recorder at one end of the room. But if you’ve ever heard a single Pussy Galore song or album, you know that’s exactly the way it should be.

I used to make myself crazy trying to hunt down a copy of this when I was younger… well this and actually every single Pussy Galore release, and never managed to find a copy of Exile on Main St. (either on tape or some of the vinyl and CD pressings Shove eventually did for it) until the digital music age. Being that this is a song for song cover of one of the most well known albums, from one of the hugest bands of all time, I doubt we’ll ever see an official re-release it.

So rather than celebrating this classic with some newly unreleased (and recently re-recorded) tracks by Jagger and Richards, why not let some other legends like Jon Spencer, Neil Hagerty, Christina Martinez,  Julia Cafritz and Bob Bert give you there take on it? I actually forgot how many legends were in Pussy Galore, until I wrote that…wow.

Pussy Galore – Exile on Main St.

Upon returning home for the Summer after my Freshman year of College I remember getting into a pissing contest with an old high school friend of mine who went out west for school. It was a silly “Oh I bet you’ve never heard of this band” type of childish and pretentious taunting that was mostly in good fun as we caught each other up on a years worth of music that we’d each discovered since entering college.

One of the bands tossed my way was Long Hind Legs who I made a point of tracking down soon after because a) I really liked their name and b) she was wearing a homemade T-shirt for the band while we engaged in our game of “cooler than thou.”

This was also a period of my life where I was fanatically trying to discover as much 70s and 80s Post-Punk and New Romantic as my budget and resources could allow. Long Hind Legs perfectly played itself right into that… while rougher around the edges, their maudlin yet poppy tunes were the perfect throwback I was looking for.Plus it wasn’t ever just straight aping, Long Hind Legs kept a distinct “sound” of 90s era indie rock while engaging in their brand of revivalism. Listening back to their work now, along with obvious nods to Joy Division, Bowie/Eno and The Associates, I’m also hearing things like Guided by Voices (“Painfully Obvious” sounds like a lost Robert Pollard recording), Neutral Milk Hotel and even some Thom Yorke moments in some of their songs.

It wasn’t until the band’s final release, the oddly titled Feb. 4th-14th, 1998 EP, that I realized that Long Hind Legs was actually a side project of Vern Rumsey, the pummeling bassist of Post-Hardcore gods Unwound. Their first album credited all tracks to Wolfgang and Paul and it wasn’t until the follow-up EP that Rumsey’s name and image graced the liner notes and art. Rumsey was joined by friend and singer Greg Allen, who I still don’t really know too much if anything about. I actually never did much digging into the back story of the band at the time of release, I was content in merely just enjoying the album. But as a pretty huge Unwound fan, discovering that this obscure gem that I had been treating myself on for about a year was actually the brainchild of Rumsey just made it all the more sweeter.

Like other late 90′s Pacific north-west band, Satisfact, Long Hind Legs goth tinged post-punk revivalism was a bit ahead of it’s time and sadly I don’t think very many people (Unwound fans included) ever really discovered or got into the band while they were active. But some 13 years after the fact as we surf a new wave of grave, Long Hind Legs not only sound just as good, but are pretty fresh and relevant. If you’ve at all been into some of the newer Goth bands we’ve been pushing on You Should be Listening to…, Reviews and just general Bloglin posts I would really give both of these releases a listen. You’ll really, really enjoy them. Pinkie swear.

Long Hind Legs – S/T & Feb. 4th-14th 1998