Thursday, June 5, 2008

Sloppy Seconds - More Trouble Than They're Worth




Sloppy Seconds are a band I've enjoyed for years. Their album Destroyed is a punk rock classic and the band are often compared to The Ramones but I'd consider Sloppy Seconds to be more interesting musically. The band coined the term junk rock to describe their sound which others have described as pop punk which aligns this band with The Buzzcocks, The Descendents and yes, the Ramones.

More Trouble Than they're worth was released in 1998 on Dexter Holland of The Offspring's Nitro record label but is now out of print. Lyrical subject matter cover sci-fi - The Queen From Outer Space and the Thing from Uranus, killing trendies, good looking girls with horrible taste in music, drinking, drive-in movie theatres, not being loved by Lesbians and pizza. Politically correct? Nah, nothing to do with politics at all.


Here's a youtube clip of their song Fifteen Minutes or it's free, which I've had to take off the album because my copy wouldn't play it. It's the weakest song anyway.

You really need to hear this album!

The band are supposed to have an album entitled Endless Bummer coming out this month. About time!

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

NBSH or why I need to learn to rip tapes




It's mindblowing to think I've had a copy of this tape for nearly twenty years. The band is Norman Bates and The Showerheads and the demo is called 'Dinner's On The Floor' which you may recognize as a quote from Neil of the British comedy series The Young Ones. On the tape cover the band state that their influences range from The Ramones to Motorhead to AC/DC to the Dead Kennedys. Which gives you a very good idea of this band's sound. The band have a current myspace site but the songs on myspace don't represent the sound on this tape or their LP.

Flex describes their sound as a blend of scum rock, punk and a little metal, somewhere between Poison Idea and de-metallised Metallica. Rocking stuff with some hits, great. Appropriately enough one of the compilation albums NBSH appear on a 1989 New York Scum Rock at CBGB's along with Ed Gein's Car, The Lunachicks and a bunch of bands I'm unfamiliar with. They also feature along with Ed Gein's Car on a 1987 compilation entitled Big Apple Rotten to The Core Vol 2. In 1989They featured on Blackout Records New York Hardcore sampler which features bands like Sheer Terror, Maximum Penalty and Gorilla Biscuits among others. Wikipedia has more details on this album.




Anyway babbler from borninthebasement posted it on that blog and really you should get it, because it's great.

The lyrics to the first song 'Here they come (not another insect story)' and demo tape cover are posted above and can be clicked on to see bigger and better detail.
=====================================================================================


I've noticed a number of people have found this blog looking for Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. Those people could previously find most of their output on cool fool's excellent blog Genocide Japan. Unfortunately Genocide Japan has come to a grinding halt. Now cool fool is doing at least three separate music blogs Despair Japan which is dedicated to Japanese noise and Avant Garde. Fans of Boris and Corrupted should check the latest postings out. His other blog is called Stereo Lynch which is more garage rock oriented and has TMGE and Mad Capsule Markets posts among others. Bloody Stupid is another of his blogs which concentrates more on Japanese hardcore and punk.

=====================================================================================

Beastwars - IV

After over a year off for various reasons, we have returned solely because we wanted to review the new Beastwars album. I really w...