Child Molesters - (I'm the) Hillside Strangler

[1978]

Scuzzy lo-fi punk perfection!

Rudimentary my dear Watson!

Sandie Shaw : Run

[1966]

Groovy baby.

A jaunty, spooky and utterly paranoid lil' tune.

 

I guess this horrifying scenario could be the continuation of the story from her previous single Nothing Comes Easy where she follows a guy around, he falls for her then she gets bored of him but then he starts following her around. All a good bit of stalking fun with cool 60s arrangements.

Nothing Comes Easy - Sandie Shaw [1966]

There are some things that people need
Someone so badly they will creep
All I wanted was someone
I have him now, it is done
Nothing comes easy
Nothing comes easy
I had a hard time getting him
And I'm regretting it now

Each place he'd go, there I'd be
I made each move so carefully
And all my scheming did work well
In the end, for me he fell
Nothing comes easy
Nothing comes easy
I had a hard time getting him
And I'm regretting it now

He was just as I expected
Nothing lasts too much
He gave me everything that I asked for
At the start, everything was fine
I was filled with every touch
Then one day when I was with him
I realised that I didn't want him any more

Now he won't leave me alone
He follows me each place I go
He says he don't want anyone new
There must be something I can do
Nothing comes easy
Nothing comes easy
I had a hard time getting him
And I'm regretting it now

Alien Porno Midgets ‎– High Altitude Over Our Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua

[2000]

Outstanding wobbly psychedelic sonic recontextualisation. 

Leyland Kirby and some other bloke do exotica plunderphonics Hawaiian style. If you love your Residents, Christian Marclay, Tom Recchion or whoever else this is right up your alley. However Mr Caretaker himself somehow injects his own viewpoint onto these sound manipulations and surprise surprise some of it is eerie and uncanny as well as also being woozy, jaunty & fun. 

EUROPEANS - Europeans

[1978]

Top obscure British new wave single. Some insane twisted keyboard action amongst the high energy power pop riffage and awesomely daft catchy chorus. Euro-peans! Out of Bristol on Heartbeat Records. 

Victrola – A Game Of Despair

[1983]

A glorious array of intertwining icy synth-waves, gloomy guitar-waves and a bleak crispy drum machine. It's cold yet kinda comforting and cozy. A haunting hypnotic trip to the coldest depths of loneliness so infectious you don't want it to end. Dejection has never sounded so alluring and majestic.

A triumph of evocative 80s synth production that remains outstanding to this day.

The Embarrassment

Elizabeth Montgomery's Face [1981]

One of those "lost bands", "unknown legends" or "best band you never heard" bands. I mean when that comp cd came out in the 90s they really were unknown and I guess are still to some extent. Can you be forgotten if you weren't known in the first place... 

This tune is new wave of the quirky, dark and jangly kind. 

60s American telly is iconic and emblazoned on my mind. Get Smart, I Dream Of Jeanie, Gilligan's Island, Bewitched etc. Get your knobs out boys. 

Elizabeth Montgomery's Fa-a-ace!

Shoulda gone to number one in Canadia at least!

Patio Set [1980]

Punky post-punk, punky new wave, new wave-y post-punk etc etc etc. This was the debut single from Wichita Kansas' finest The Embarrassment. Dark, sorta menacing, weird and a whole lotta fun!

I'm A Don Juan [1981]

Double your guitar pleasure with supreme, tight, high octane riff-age and supreme surreal riff-age on this one. Frantic rhythm section plus another dual vocal with hooks galore. Surprisingly unique. Totally cookin' manic pop thrills! 

Celebrity Art Party [1981]

This one might be their best pop moment. They jangled, they angular-ed, they menaced, they dual vocal-ed, they toe-tapped, they rocked, they popped! Infectious tight blistering pop.

Drive Me To The Park [1983]

A crackin' tune from their second ep Death Travels West. Nails the whole dark indie jangly thing while simultaneously still sounding punk. Still sounds incredibly fresh to this day. If this had been on a major label or big indie imprint it would have surely been a smash but it was released on Fresh Sounds who were based in Lawrence Kansas.

Two Cars [198?]

Alright one more... A brief angular song. Very cool dual vocal with talk-singing, the sorta stylistic choice taken on ten years later by (early) Pavement. These guys really nailed a distinct indie sound all of their own in the nascent days of college rock. That this tune was never released at the time, only ever coming out in 1995 on the archival cd Heyday 1979-1983, is crazy to me.  

НИИ Косметики — Счастлив как никогда

[1986]

Brilliant and absolutely astonishing that this is not Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti circa 1999.

 

When this turned up on that Fact Mix by Ariel Pink in 2010 there was no info to be found about this tune on the world wide web information superhighway. I'm sure we all speculated that it was actually just Ariel pretending to be a faux 80s Soviet new wave pop star but look it turned up 4 years later on the youtubes. Cool.

Spider Vomit

[2007]

Here's a rough and ready video of Spider Vomit I've never seen until today. Scuzzy tripped out raunch'n'roll baby!

You know what's funny I saw Spider Vomit live once and had their cd. Back in the late 00s I had the first cds by St Helens, Beaches and Scott & Charlene's Wedding but I did not realise the dude from Spider Vomit was the same dude in S&CW and the chick in St Helens was the singer in Spider Vomit and the main dude in St Helens played bass on the first Scott & Charlene's Wedding album. That's all news to me today. All I knew was that the bird who played guitar in Spider Vomit was also in Beaches and that she was awesome.

I was once accused of being a hipster for owning the Widows Walk cd.

[2006]

Here's an even rougher videeo. Spider Vomit doing Widows Walk live in someone's lounge room a year earlier. Tribal psychedelic grunge Royal Trux stylee. So the singers here are Hannah Brooks who went on to sing in St Helens and Craig Darmody who went on to form Scott & Charlene's Wedding. 

St Helens - Pharaohs Tomb [2009]

At the time I thought St Helens leaned way too much into their Royal Trux and Television influences but I gotta say there are some pretty cool tunes on their one and only cd Heavy Profession. It's all dual guitar interplay and intertwining girl/boy vocals. 

St Helens - One In Seventeen [2009]

Now that we're in this constant state of decline culturally and otherwise, I really appreciate these guys giving it a good crack. The Rolling Stones heavily influenced Television and The Rolling Sones heavily influenced Royal Trux and The Rolling Stones, Television and Royal Trux heavily influenced St Helens. That's a triple layer of Stones which is just the right amount. There's a bit Neil and bit of J to add into the pastiche mix on this tune too. I'm starting to think that this tune is so good it might just be undeniable... or has my naff-detector broken now that I'm old... 

Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Footscray Station [2010]

So the singer here is Craig Darmody who had been in Spider Vomit. Here though he's in more of an 80s indie jangle mode à la The Clean, The Bats and The Go-Betweens so I never put 2 and 2 together. Who cares anyway. Para Vista Social Club was an instant hit in my mind which now I see is kinda funny because it is just as much indebted to its influences as the St Helens album. These cds while having charismatic creators were record collection rock following well worn paths with nary innovation. Why do we allow certain things and not others? Taste: It's a mystery. 

Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Every Detail [2010]

Every Detail's got all the intense strums, jangles and noisy repetition swirling into a maelstrom echoing legendary pioneers The Velvets, The Feelies, The Clean et al. Nobody really expected a popular revival of this kind of music, we thought it had been done to death by the end of the 80s although it had continued in its own little alcove during the 90s & 00s where the diehards were keeping the faith. These Melbourne kids weren't even around when REM, The Clean, The Verlaines, The Bats and The Chills were getting played on all night music video show Rage so I guess it was a trendy fresh and retro to them.

The downbeat sounds of both St Helens and Scott & Charlene's Wedding were retroactively chucked into the fake genre dubbed dolewave. This was a joke invented as a pejorative term for pissweak jangly indie bands in Melbourne in 2012 like Dick Diver and Twerps. A scene is not a genre but somehow a few years later midwit writers took it seriously and now its got a wikipedia page all of its own. I really don't get that St Helens get included as they don't have a wannabe Dunedin 2.0 bone in their body, Scott & Charlene's Wedding however...

Beaches - Hoedown [2008]

I guess this was the first Beaches tune we all heard. So Gillian Tucker plays bass here and made the video. Beaches were a strange sorta Melbourne underground supergroup with the most guitarists. Hoedown is an upbeat driving surf guitar jam. Pretty cool.

Beaches - Halve [2010]

More guitars is better! A swarm of sparkling, driving and spaced out guitars go into swirling overdrive for your dreamy listening pleasure. The cosmic-psych-gaze is real.

I Have A Boyfriend - Chiffons

[1963]

An underrated Chiffons tune compared to their other Tokens production the previous more well known One Fine Day.

Everything's in the right place - the legendary girl-group drumbeat, the lead vocal, the harmonies, the bells, the key change, the surreal proto-psych guitar break etc. Perfection.

This tune and The Ronettes Be My Baby were both written by Barry/Greenwich. The drum beat is practically the same, they were recorded around the same time in mid 1963 with totally different producers, vocal groups and ensembles. I'm not sure who got there first but in the end Phil Spector and The Wrecking Crew overloaded the Be My Baby beat with more reverb and made it iconic.

I Have A Boyfriend might (I'm not 100% sure on this, I guess Bob Stanley would know) also have the first usage of that lighter than air "helium marshmallow" guitar sound which means this track probably has two innovative landmark features. 

One of the top two minute teenage symphonies. 

Melt Not My Igloo - Larry Jon Wilson

[1975]

A country-funk jam that gets pretty cosmic.

"Old cold gravy ain't gonna harm ya
If the meat is warm"

Wise words from Mr Larry.