Libyan Hit Squad - Fiji

If you've been reading this blog from the beginning and/or you know me personally, then you know how highly I think of Libyan Hit Squad. Not only are they an incredible band, but they're great people as well. I'm proud to have shared the stage with them on the too few occasions that it happened.

Fiji really shows the band progressing in their sound, which I described in this (unedited) review for The Big Takeover #64:LHS never fail to amaze me. Now that their full-length promo CD has finally found a proper release on vinyl with Ripping Records, it’s like hearing the album all over again. LHS exist in their own musical dimension of Black Flag, Love and The Minutemen. Fiji kicks off with the folk-rocker, “Triggers & Knives,” which could have been recorded by Arthur Lee and company back in the ‘60s. Then you’re immediately thrown into the hardcore melee of the next three songs until side A closes with the syncopated instrumental, “BHS.” Side B gets even more out there with two eerie instrumentals, a folk punk number, a straight-up hardcore thrasher and a weirdo Butthole Surfers-style track. LHS are punk rock at its challenging, unpredictable, original best. There’s something about Florida…

They're a great group of guys with great songs and they're one of the five bands around today that I actually give a shit about (others include Six Finger Satellite, The Jack Saints and The Secret Machines). I really can't wait to hear where they go after this cuz I know it will be good.The images and music were uploaded with Craig Englund's full consent. Thank you, Craig! Extra special thanks for the LP art scans and MP3s!

Libyan Hit Squad
Fiji LP
(Ripping)
2008

Link removed at the polite request of Ripping Records so...

BUY THE DAMN ALBUM!!!

Sample tracks:

Long Way

Break

Visit LHS on MySpace!

More Libyan Hit Squad!

Visit Ripping Records on MySpace!

The Repercussions - Modern Sounds

The Repercussions were one of those incestuous garage bands whose members had been in several bands before this one and most of the members had been in those bands together. They played some damn fine rock'n'roll though, and they honored me when they asked me to write the liner notes to their debut full-length. Here's what I wrote (click the image to make it larger):

Unfortunately, whoever transcribed what I wrote left out a line of text, making one section not make too much sense, but whatever, you get the point.

I saw them a few times at the now defunct and sorely missed club, Saints'N'Sinners, and in my vain attempt at getting a job in the A&R Department of Atlantic Records, this was one of the CDs I presented. Hell, they were better than most of the other crap on that label.

Perhaps it was for the best, though, as they broke up shortly after this was released. Now they're in different bands with each other.

That's rock'n'roll!

The images and music were uploaded with the full consent of Jake Elliot Roren, owner of ESCHE Records. Thank you, J-Ro!

The Repercussions
Modern Sounds CD
(ESCHE)
2005

Download Modern Sounds as a .zip file!

Sample tracks:

Everything Is Gonna Be Alright

Heather in Pleather

Where We're Going We Don't Need Roads

Pope Goat VII - Book of New Surroundings

(The Blue Room floor circa 1999/2000 - Photo by Sir Ackronomicon)

What better way to get back on track than with another Book of Pope Goat VII?

This is the Sixth Book of Pope Goat VII. Where's Number 5? We never mixed it down.

This was the first book we recorded after we moved out of my mom's house and into our own apartment. We immediately transformed our hallway, which was actually pretty spacious for a hallway, into a permanent recording studio, the Blue Room, for us to use at our leisure. This was really the most thriving creative period His Holiness the Pope Goat gave us, and we recorded something like 45 of our 50 Books here.

All tracks were now one take, no overdubs, completely improvised either off a riff one of us started, or by just hitting record and seeing what happened. This is really one of our finest moments, as the excitement and energy of our new living situation and my new-found freedom really shines through.

About the psalms:
(note: psalms that are linked can be downloaded as samples)

01. All Ye Who Enter Here - Our first recording in our new apartment and in the Blue Room conjuring the powers of His Holiness, the Pope Goat.

02. Tropical Frog - We had some shitty cereal with stale marshmallows in it, like Lucky Charms or something, and it was advertising the new "tropical frog" marshmallow, so in true Pope Goat fashion, we did a song about it.

03. Tropical Toad - We didn't feel done with the "Tropical Frog" thing when the tape ran out, so we recorded a "sequel," as directed by the Pope Goat.

04. Do the Pope Goat - Pope Goat disco. Pretty self-explanatory.

05. Shit - Everybody does it.

06. Christian Disco - The only channel we got on our TV (since we refused to pay for cable) was TBN, the Born Again Christian channel, which became a huge inspiration to our music. I believe this is the first TBN reference in the Pope Goat cannon.

07. White Trash Rap - Here, we were joined by Sir Ackronomicon's brother, Sir P of Pimping Hos, on vocals, and Sir Minister Barry the Conquistador on keyboards. Sir Ackronomicon is on bass and I'm playing trumpet and screaming in the background.

08. You Silly Bitch - Yup.

09. Black Sunday - We were hungover on a Sunday morning, and we said, "Black Sunday" - a reference to the great Mario Bava movie - in our Pope Goat voices and realized were were being summoned by His Holiness Pope Goat VII to record, which we did.

10. Leaky Ceiling - One morning it rained and I woke up with a deluge of water dripping through my ceiling all over my room, like it was raining inside.

11. Metal Plate - Basically, when we were moving into our apartment, Sir Ackronomicon had leaned a metal plate from something his dad had welded against the railing outside our door, and when we were moving his mattress in, we knocked the plate, which slid under the railing and sailed down into the courtyard of the apartment complex. We heard somebody yell, "What the fuck was that?" We didn't think anything of it until he kept yelling. We looked at each other and knew something was wrong. We ran downstairs and saw some guy on his knees holding his head. Sir Ackronomicon pulled the guy's baseball cap off his head and blood poured down his face. I ran back upstairs and called 911. Luckily, the guy didn't sue, but Sir Ackronomicon was stuck paying the guy's medical bills for a while.

12. Toilet - It was one of those typical shitty cheap apartment toilets that ran for no reason or got stuck after you flushed and you had to jiggle the handle.

Pope Goat VII

Book of New Surroundings CDR
(MPAE/Hummer Productions)
1999

Download Book of New Surroundings as a .zip file!

note: the .zip file includes booklet and tray-card inserts so you can make your own PG7 CD!

More Pope Goat VII!

Visit Pope Goat VII on MySpace!

***UPDATE***

I was sick for a while and I fell off the radar, but I'm finally starting to feel better so I should be back up and running at full capacity sometime next week. I apologize for the delay.

World War IX - When a Good Time Turns to Shit

Haven't been feeling very motivated lately, so here's a quick one for the week.

This is an early "single" from WWIX, when Max was still the vocalist. Personally, I never really cared for his vocals - his voice is a bit dopey and onstage he really seemed to be trying too hard. Compare this version of "Treasure Hunt" to the one on Brown Bagging It with Mike's vocals. There's no comparison; Mike's is way, way better.

But the band is top-notch here as always and it's cool to hear the origins of "the best trashy punk band in NYC," to quote myself.

The images and music were uploaded with Justin Melkmann's consent. Thank you, Justin!

World War IX
When a Good Time Turns to Shit CD
(Elis Eil)
2005

01. Intervention

02. Treasure Hunt

Visit WWIX on MySpace!

The Two Felipes - Hot Off the Grill

For the beginning of the new year (and a new decade, according to some on NPR), I bring you the origins of one of the most important bands to my musical upbringing.

Hot Off the Grill was The Two Felipes' first tape, and it's basically a "demo" for what would become Eat Your Fill. It's pretty interesting to hear the orignal versions of these songs in comparison to how they evolved only a few months later.

A must for all Felipes Fanatics!

The images and music were uploaded with Dan Vebber's full consent. Thank you, Dan!

The Two Felipes
Hot Off the Grill CS
(Flaming Cow Productions)
1986

Download Hot Off the Grill as a .zip file!

Sample tracks:

Industrial Strife

Jay's Plan

Fish

More Felipes!!!

ULTRABASTARD! - Demo

(Live at Big Al Doogie's birthday party August 2006)

My band, i.e., the functioning one that practices every week and plays out once in a while.

John and I met in Maggot, a Lower East Side scummy punk band that I joined after seeing them play once. Unfortunately, main man Greg Maggot and I butted heads and I was out of the band a few months later. Shortly afterward, I started playing with a douchebag who called himself Atom, where I met Dan, but that's another story.

Basically, John called me out of the blue one day after the Maggot debacle, right when I was realizing things weren't working out with Atom, and he asked me if I wanted to play music with him. Of course I did - he's a great guy, really easy to work with and he played bass. So we started writing and practicing songs with a drum machine in his garage. John wanted to name the band "Hypocrite," and I liked "Jackhammer," so we became Jackhammer Hypocrite. We actually played a show with the drum machine to about five people in a sandlot.

The thing was, we really wanted a singer and a drummer. Eventually, we found the latter in Dan Brown, a guy from my neck of the woods, the North Fork of Long Island. None of the singers we "auditioned" worked out, so John and I took over vocal duties. This line-up played several great shows, most notably at The King's Club in Centereach and Saints'N'Sinners in Smithtown. We also changed our name to JAKKHAMR HYPOCRYT for some reason.

Eventually, Dan Brown, who's a helluva musician by the way, began flaking on band practice, leaving John and I to sit there pissed off and frustrated. Finally, we just never called him back for practice and we returned to square one. We put a classified ad in a local music mag and talked to a few people, but nothing worked out. In the meantime, I played with Optimus Prime. Then one day, John called and said, "I've got a dumb idea - why don't I switch to drums and get Dan from Optimus Prime to play bass?" So that's what we did, and it's stayed that way for better or worse ever since, although now we practice in Dan's basement and we're called ULTRABASTARD!

There's been a lot of fun and a lot of turmoil. We did a mini-tour of Florida with Libyan Hit Squad. We played Cleveland and met Nightmare Mode. We've had incredible, ass-kicking shows and really horrible, embarrassing ones. We've hated each other and loved each other. We all love it, though, and we always come back for more. In fact, we're recording again (finally).

These songs were recorded in late 2005, right after John switched to drums and Dan joined.

(Live at Joe's going away party October 2009)

About the songs:
(note: songs that are linked can be downloaded as samples)

01. Turning Fat Into Muscle - This instrumental evolved out of a riff I pulled out of my ass one night when John was playing bass and Dan Brown was still drumming. It became our staple opener for quite a while.

02. Numb - John wrote this one, though I came up with the chords for the solo part. It's a heavy, solid song about frustration - a subject that appears often in our lyrics. This was one of the original seven songs John and I assembled with the drum machine.

03. Don't Need You - I wrote this trying to write the "Sonic Reducer" of break-up songs. I actually originally recorded it on my 4-track for the second FPOS album that never materialized (because I had a real band for a change). It remains a crowd favorite.

04. Alive - John write this, but his original lyrics were some "pretty girl, dream come true" drivel that had no place in our repertoire, so I wrote lyrics about the asshole my mom married. Another of the original seven songs.

05. Kiss Me - One of mine, written shortly before "Don't Need You." One of the original seven.

06. Citiots - Dan came up with the music for this killer song and we all worked together to arrange it into what it is here. I wrote the lyrics about summers on the North Fork with some inspiration from The Candy Snatchers.

07. Piss & Hatred - John wrote this about a rough patch in his marriage. Also one of the original seven.

08. Big Fat Dumb - I was on a Motorhead kick when I wrote this song about an asshole I had to work with. We don't play it anymore, mostly because Dan can't remember the bass line and I'm too lazy to re-teach him.

09. Myrtle (Something Good) - Dan wrote and sang this garage-y stomper. He titled it "Something Good," but John said it should be called "Myrtle." Still one of my favorites.

10. Blues Type Thing - One of the original seven I wrote that was inadvertently ripped from Iggy Pop's "Rock And Roll Party" from Party. And yes, that's a Robert Plant reference in the lyrics.

11. Fight Song - I wrote this song about my experience moving across the country after being annoyed by Rush on the radio at work. Funny how that worked out. John said he could see the crowd fighting to it, so the name stuck. I think I wanted to call it "Wanderlust," but that didn't last long. One of the original seven, and, just for the hell of it, I'm gonna post that original seven song, four-track demo up here at some point. Also, be sure to listen to the hidden track, which appears 30 seconds after "Fight Song" ends.

PLAY LOUD AND DRINK HEAVILY.

ULTRABASTARD!
Demo CDR
(MPAE)
2005

Download Demo as a .zip file!

Bonus!!! A video of us in the basement performing a song that's not on the CD!!!