I don’t really have very many records left anymore. I’ve been selling them off for the past decade once they saw CD or digital release to make room for other crap I’ve accumulated or just whenever I’ve need extra cash. However this double 7-inch is something I’ve held on to and never thought of selling. Not because it’s one of my favorite pieces of music (it’s far from it), but there’s just an unexplainable something about it I couldn’t part with. From the hand silk screened artwork, red & yellow colored vinyl, to how perfectly it captured the essence and sound of the 80s Post-Punk scene. It isn’t perfect and sometimes a rough listen, but it is always very engaging, mysterious and left me wanting just a little more as soon as it’s 15 minutes of songs were up. But on top of all that, this obscure little double 7-inch is where I took my alias from. My Pal the Crook is the 2nd track on Sara Goes Pop: Arab O Habab EP and even though it isn’t the vinyl’s stand out track, it’s title always made it a really enticing track for me! Taunting me to listen to it over and over as if with each new listen it would morph into another song that better fit it’s name. It never does, but that’s basically the power of the entire 7-inch. It is what it is and never changes, but for whatever reason you always think you can make it sound like what you want on every new listen to it.

If you’re a fan of the early jangly Twee Pop like The Shop Assistants, Marine Girls & The Raincoats you really owe it to yourself to listen to this. While keeping the art-damaged rough and angular sound of The Homosexuals, Sara’s voice adds a very delicate and almost pop sensibilities to the music. Either as Post-Punk or Twee this is like any other album before or after it and a shame how obscure it is.

Amos & Sara (sometimes known as Sara Goes Pop) were one of a multitude of off-shoots from Jim Welton AKA L. Voag (Amos) of the Post-Punk revolutionaries, The Homosexuals. After leaving the band he went on to release countless albums, EPs and singles here and there. For a brief period L. Voag teamed up with female vocalist & multi-instrumentalist, who as far as I know only goes by the name of Sara. Together they produced a few very hard to find cassette only and some vinyl releases. Many of those earlier releases were much more experimental and incorporated a lot of Free-Jazz noodling. Much like the title suggests Amos & Sara did indeed go Pop, or as much as they could while still sounding like the same band on this Arab O Habab 7-inch. It’s probably the most accessible and best recorded of L. Voag’s material from the Amos & Sara era. Hopefully this will spark some of you to explore the multi-disc The Homosexuals retrospectives that have come out in recent years.

Amos & Sara: Sara Goes Pop - Arab O Habab EP

One of my favorite LPs, from two of my favorite MCs… Godfather Don & Kool Keith. And while Kool Keith’s has since been replaced by Ghostface & MF Doom as the Hipster’s favorite MC of choice, he’s hardly kicking around in obscurity nowadays. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some criminally over-looked and sadly out of print gems to his name. The Cenobites one and only album happens to be one of those forgotten gems.

Originally released in 1993 as a 12″ EP on the now defunct and irreplaceable Fondle ‘Em Records, this record was not only Kool Keith at the peak of his free-form maniacal genius, but also at his absolute grimiest! Kool Keith brilliance has always seemingly been about who was handling his production, couple him with a bad producer or let him produce himself and he goes so way off the deep end that it’s unlistenable. But pair him with someone who knows how to cater a beat to his flow and you get absolute magic. Godfather Don does exactly that through-out the album. Taking the darker, off kilter production he introduced on the Ultramag’s final album, Four Horseman he amps up the gullyness factor by 10 here and now handles half of the MCing duties. To this day I’ve never heard another MC compliment Keith’s spacey, frenetic delivery the way Don does with his beefy jackhammer assault.

The Cenobites EP, has seen a few reissues since it’s initial release even expandeding it to an LP by adding remixes and previously unreleased tracks… most notably Return to Zero, a re-named Ulltramag’s Checkin’ My Style featuring a previously omitted Godfather Don verse. But with Fondle ‘Em no longer serving the best of the best when it comes to Hip Hop, the last times this album saw print was 8 years ago. For those of you who’re only familiar with Keith’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, you really owe it to yourself where that album’s genius first began perculating.

P.S. Look at that fucking amazingly awful cover design… I love when bad design is so bad it unknowingly becomes great.

The Cenboites - The Cenobites LP

This past weekend I got to spend the day with Mike & Damian from Fucked Up. Which meant almost all we spoke about was music! I wasn’t really sure what my next Digging For Fire would be, but thankfully a mention of tracking down a certain 7″ and our conversation then steered me into the right direction… The Mumps!

I had totally forgotten about the Mumps. I don’t think I’ve even listened to anything of theirs in maybe a Decade, but I used to love them! I have no clue why I let them fall so far off my playlist. Formed in the mid 70s, the Mumps weren’t quite aggresive enough to be Punk, were way too weird to be Power-Pop, and just too rough around the edges to be New Wave. They were the kind of band that I imagine rode in many scenes because they couldn’t fit into any one in particular. Which is probably why as the decades past they’ve gotten more and more forgotten. They had the charm of the New York Dolls, the creepy rhythmic timing of the Cramps & the quirkiness of the B-52s. And while during the 70s they were the toast of the 70s NYC scene, failure to ever secure a major label deal or release an album quickly doused the flame on their legend, as more and more of their contemporaries began being snapped up and making it big as the decade came to an end.

The bands today is best known for who it’s members were than what they sounded like. Singer and frontman Lance Loud was “the son”on what is generally accepted as TV’s first reality show… PBS’ An American Family. Lance is not only famous for being on the show, but for being openly gay on TV. Lance unfortunately away in 2001 from AIDS. Keyboardist Kristian Hoffman, Loud’s best friend & frequent guest on An American Family, handled a lot of the songwriting duties in the Mumps. Hoffman I think is better known these days as a frequent collaborator/song writer/keyboardist for so many other pioneering punk/no/new wave acts of the 70s-80s like Lydia Lunch, James White & even penning Klaus Nomi’s Total Eclipse.

As I mentioned, the Mumps never put out any albums just two 7″ records, with Crocodile Tears being their best known song from them. Personally I think Scream & Scream Again! was the bands best song but unfortunately it was never released as a single or b-side. Since their demise there have been a few compilations that that have cataloged their entire recorded output. I’m posting the comprehensive and long out of print one Fatal Charm. I hope you enjoy!

The Mumps - Fatal Charm

I discovered Units’ Digital Stimulation on a trip to the now defunct Rhino Records in Hyde Park, NY. I had no clue who they were but the record was cheap and for whatever reason I thought it might be good. I put it with a small stack of vinyl I was buying and forgot about it for a few months. I realized I hadn’t ever listened to the record until I was home from school one summer… When I finally put it on my turntable it was like a revelation. It was part Synthpop, part Post-Punk and part Power Pop (all things I was really into at the time) but uniquely it’s own sound all at the same time. The only thing I could even conceivably begin to compare Units to back then was Devo and The Sparks. But the major difference was that the Units used a Punk Rock sense of urgency instead of the kitschy whimsy that Devo and The Sparks relied on so heavily. And unlike either Devo & The Sparks, The Units featured Male & Female vocals. It was almost like X but with keyboards replacing guitars. I never imagined some random vinyl bought on a whim would become capture my attention quite the way it had, moving it to full on obsession.

This was the mid 90s so tracking down info on obscure bands via the internet wasn’t yet an art form… so it took some digging and time but eventually Units’ Digital Stimulation became my gateway into the short lived and wonderful Westcoast scene most commonly refered to as Synthpunk nowadays. Unfortunately though most albums from the bands of that scene are out of print, rare and pretty hard to track down. I spent a pretty penny pre SolarSeek trying to get a hold of music from Los Microwaves, The Inflatable Boy Clams, Nervous Gender and so many others. Actually to this day a lot of this stuff is still sitting on vinyl not yet ripped into digital format and with little interest from any label in re-releasing it on CD. It’s really unfortunate and as result I’ll probably be devoting a few later volumes of Digging For Fire to profile some of these bands.

Digital Stimulation stands as the Unit’s only full length album. They did however put out a few 7″ and 12″ singles to go along with it, including The Right Man 12″ which was a minor New Wave single of it’s time. Due to the popularity of The Right Man, Units were eventually signed to Epic Records and put out their final release, the New Way to Move EP. Unfortunately by this point though the band had polished up all those unique & jagged edges that made Digital Stimulation so endearing and opted to become a more straight forward New Wave/Synthpop band ala fellow westcoasters Missing Persons. While it was no Digital Stimulation, A Way to Move is still an enjoyable listen that I encourage you to track down if you enjoy this album.

Units - Digital Stimulation

I’m sure you’re reading the Mystidious Misfitts - A Who Dat? title and probably wondering “A Who Dat?” as to who I’m even writing about. The Misfitts who started out as video back-up dancers, put out only one album… one album that didn’t really stray much from your typical mid-90′ formula that saw them borrowing a little Boot Camp Clik here, a little Native Tongues there, mix with some D.I.T.C. and sprinkle some C.M. Crew and Original Flavor for good measure. No offense to the Misfitts, but it’s kind of easy to see why they were so forgotten in the mix of better albums from the same artists they were trying to emulate. But however blasé A Who Dat? came across in 1995, 13 years later it’s actually downright refreshing!

Like a lot of people my favorite era of Hip Hop was 1991-1996, and If you’re like me you’ve spun the majority of those classic, well known, sort of known & cult following 90s albums to death! So what do you do when you’re not sick of a sound but just sick of your collection? You go digging for the obscure of that era… which is exactly where you’ll find the Misfitts. Like I said back in 1995 when put against Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, The Infamous, Liquid Swords & Do You Want More?!!!??!, A Who Dat can barely tread water. But in the here and now of 2008 nothing sounds more fresh and welcome to my ears than some good 90s era Hip Hop I haven’t heard spun to death by every DJ on the planet.

I Be, Trix of a Misfit, Upside Down (Digga Mix) & M.I. Crooked Letter along with a Buckwild remix of I Be are the clear cut stand outs. But that isn’t all the album has to offer because it holds it’s own in setting the mood and capturing the era in terms of production & flow. It’s biggest problem really is that it’s bogged down by too many interludes (8 to be exact), most of which clock in well over a minute and really drag down the tempo of the album as a whole. Regardless though… those of you hankering for a new 90s Hip Hop sound fix, check this out now and thank me later.

Mystidious Missfitts - A Who Dat?

P.S. Sorry for the image from the Upside Down 12″. I’m in Asia on a layover and unable to scan in my CDs cover and that was the best image I could find online!

As much as I’d like to say what a celebrity did, wore or supported never had any effect on me it just wouldn’t be true. Growing up, the Beastie Boys were my epitome of what cool was. Not only did they introduced me to streetwear such as X-Large & Bape but their (now defunct) Grand Royal record imprint put out and introduced me to so much great music in the 90s like Bis, Atari Teenage Riot & even Liquid Liquid. So needless to say I awlays liked to keep wih whatever the Beastie Boys were involved in.

BS 2000 was a side project between Adrock & drummer Amery “AWOL” Smith (Suicidal Tendencies, Uncle Slam, Beastie Boys, Leftover Crack). Without sounding at all like the Beastie Boys it still was very Beasties-esque. The sound is catchy, buoyont and stripped down with most of the album being made on antiquated keyboards, samplers and drum machines. It’s equal parts New Wave, Hardcore, Lounge & Space Age Pop. Perhaps had you asked the Beastie Boys to make an Esquival album, this might be what it would have sounded like.

Despite Adrock’s presence and the Grand Royal stamp I’m sure it’s very lo-fi nature and bad cover art didn’t exactly help garner it a wide fan base. But then again, I don’t think BS 2000 was ever looking for mass appeal. This album was very obviously made solely to appease it’s musicians creative impulses. Unlike with most side project bands, it’s blatant self indulgence just really works and isn’t at all a detracting factor.

BS 2000 put out two albums both of which are out of print. Simply Mortified (their second album) came out on CD in 2000 while their first self titled release was only available as a vinyl from the Grand Royal website back in 1997 and is pretty hard to track down. I know because I’ve been looking for one for a while now.

I don’t know how or why it took so long, but listening back to Simply Mortified I was hit with how similar in sound BS 2000 was to Le Tigre/Julie Ruin. Adrock started dating Kathleen Hanna (now his wife I believe) in around ‘97 which is right around the time she began working on her Julie Ruin solo album (following Bikini Kill’s break up) and he was starting BS 2000. It’s interesting to realize now just how much the two were influencing one another’s musical direction.

BS 2000 - Simply Mortified

I used to love to go Dollar Bin hunting. Most times you either walked awake empty handed or with a really scratched copy of some mediocre to halfway decent album you just didn’t want to shell $7 for whenever you found it used normally. But every so often you’d unearth a diamond like no other and it fueled the fire for more and more fruitless trips to the Dollar Bin.

I can’t claim Genuine Liqua Hits as my own dollar bin discovery though. A friend in Florida who was also Dollar Bin hunting unearthed this gem which he then clued me in on. He then proceeded to track down a second copy in yet another Dollar Bin and sent it to me. For that I am truly thankful because I’d probably never have discovered the wonders of Vell Bakardy if it wasn’t for him.

Now while the cover suggests this was put together on Pagemaker on a Mac II in some dude’s garage, Genuine Liqua Hits was actually put out by Rick Rubin’s American Records, not exactly a fly by night operation. So why did Vell fall so hard and heavy into the Dollar Bin? Beats me, but I’m fairly sure this god awful cover didn’t help. If I had to guess what stumbled this album out the gate it was probably this… It didn’t get the proper push from it’s record label, reppin’ Kansas City just didn’t have the same ring as Compton did back in 1995 and Vell was just a bit ahead of his time. He was kind of like Devin the Dude, and fuck… Devin the Dude was way ahead of his time on Fadanuf Fa Everybody a year before Genuine Liqua Hits even dropped.

The album really doesn’t stray too far from what it title suggests… boozy southern slang about drinking, bitches and Latarian’s favorite, doin hood rat shit. Production wise It’s got the kind syrupy sweet 90s G-funk meets Rap-A -Lot beats you’d expect from the album’s subject matter. Vell made one video for the album, Drink Wit’ Me which was poor a choice as with which to promote this album with. While it’s a good track, Drunk B*tches produced by and featuring AMG (Yes the DJ Quik AMG) should have been the first single. No only because it’s an amazing track but because it probably would of helped push Vell a little more by riding some G-funk coattails. AMG also produces and raps on Liqua Ndustry, another stand out cut. All and all the whole album is just terrific… It makes for a perfect alternative to anyone out there who’s tired of spinning his same old west coast classics to death but hankering for some of that same old sound, with some southern flavor.

Vell Bakardy - Genuine Liqua Hits

Romania has been one of those bands that I try to push on anyone who even remotely has similar music taste as myself. I discovered Romania in a used CD bin at some point in the mid to late 90s. At first glance I mistook it for an Associates, Tears for Fears or even Soft Cell type duo from the 80s. When I flipped the CD to the back I noticed that it was actually from 1995 and the familiar logo of Mark Robinson’s (of Unrest) TeenBeat Records. On that alone I decided to plunk down the $7.99 they were asking for the disc and couldn’t have been happier when I finally listened to it. Much like the cover suggested this was pure Synthpop/New Romantic goodness straight in the vein of O.M.D., Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Visage, Camouflage & Blancmange. While there were a handful of bands at the time that took their cues from Synthpop (The Magnetic Fields for example), none fully turned back the time a decade in doing so. Romania created an album that sounded exactly as if it was recorded in 1983 as the backdrop to some unseen John Hughes film. But not only did so in 1995, they made an album that could go toe to toe with so many those early 80s synthpop classics. Drop any track off of this album at an 80s dance party and I’m sure someone will ask “Which Tears for Fears album was this song on?” or something to that effect.

Info on Romania is pretty scarce, most of it centered to their small entry on the TeenBeat website. They were out of Washington D.C. via Hawaii but I have no clue how often they even played out or if they even did. Sadly Remodel was the only album they would ever record and release. They broke-up shortly there after (I only know this because I tried in vein to book a show with them way back when). I do know that James Noble hosts and DJs various parties in D.C. and I believe Jonathan Cook went on to write/help write the scores on a few films.

I normally wouldn’t do this but since this album is out of print and pretty difficult to track down even on file sharing programs, I thought I’d post a link to download it. Hopefully more people could unearth this little gem. Who knows, maybe this will spark some interest in re-releasing it along with maybe some B-sides and demos sitting around somewhere.

Romania - Remodel

Since most of our Bloglin Contributors seem to be taking a couple days off from posting anything I thought what the fuck, i’ll start a new series to go along with Awesomely Awful Albums. This time however the focus is on just unearthing some long forgotten or just ignored bands that sadly never got the exposure they deserved.

I’m starting with one of my favorites, Olympia, Washington’s Satisfact. Lead by Matt Steinke who was also the mastermind behind Mocket & Octant (Both of whom will end up here at some point). Like with most scenes, they usually start long before you or anyone truly realizes whats going on, and by the time you do you’re 5 steps into a seconds wave of it and it just builds from there until sputtering out leaving the few standing who have managed to transcend being labeled (Kind of like in Streetwear). Satisfact were at the forefront of (what could be looked back to now) a short and mostly (I feel) ignored post-punk scene during the mid to late 90s. Along with Long Hind Legs, Romania, Antarctica, My Favorite, Speedking & The Faint, they eventually helped pave the way for the largescale and successful indie rock post-punk revival that occurred during the earlier part of this century with bands like Interpol, Bloc Party, The Liars & The Rapture. Which was then the eventual catalyst watered down mainstream push of the Killers & The Bravery. Which as is almost always the case the

Sadly most of those early bands never put out more than an EP or no more than an albums worth of material, Satisfact, My Favorite & The Faint being the main exceptions. Satisfact penned 3 awesome albums driven by cold vocals, dark synths and spastic guitar riffs that set the mood of dancing your night away in your bedroom while you pined over some girl. While they never reached the eventual popularity of the Faint (who somehow failed to really breakthrough during the “dance-punk” explosion), It was Satisfact’s first album The Unwanted Sounds of Satisfact that totally drove me to discover and fall in love with Gang of Four, The Fall & as result countless other post-punk bands.

The Unwanted Sounds of Satisfact was sadly a very apt name for their first album. It was a dollar bin staple for quite a while and is still a cheap and easy used CD find on Amazon. All of their albums actually can actually be had for probably under $10 including shipping on Amazon and all three of them are excellent. I encourage anyone who is a fan of the kind of music mentioned here to them up! Unfortunately Matthew Steinke doesn’t seem to have any interest in starting up a new band. He spends most of his time as a visual artists these days painting and constructing all sorts of strange self powered robotic type instruments.

Head over to their fan run Myspace page to hear some Satisfact!