News

What’s up Sorry State readers. I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving last week. I personally am a big fan of the sides when it comes to Thanksgiving, especially some good dressing and mac n cheese. Dessert wise I’m definitely going pecan pie, but most people I know prefer pumpkin. To each their own. Anyways, you’re not here to read about food. Let’s get to the music. This week I’d like to talk about the album that introduced me to the blues, Rockin’ Chair by Howlin’ Wolf. I actually was introduced to the music of Howlin’ Wolf through the Grateful Dead. I loved their versions of Spoonful and The Red Rooster and one day while listening my brother said to me, “man you need to listen to Howlin’ Wolf.” I can’t even lie, I didn’t even realize the songs were covers (written by Willie Dixon but first recorded by Howlin’ Wolf) when I was first listening to them, but when I heard these original versions, I instantly fell in love with them. The gruff and grit in Howlin’ Wolf’s voice is just unmatched by anyone else. It sounds so raw. It makes sense though. He was a mountain of a man, standing tall at 6 foot 3 inches and weighing around 300 pounds. You can really hear the pain and hurt behind his booming voice when he’s singing. When I find myself feeling down, I just throw on some Howlin’ Wolf. There’s something comforting about listening to a guy singing songs written 60+ years ago about the same feelings you’re feeling. It makes you feel less isolated in the way you feel, at least for me. That’s why I love the blues. It makes you feel better about feeling bad. It’s not all sad though. Songs like Wang-Dang-Doodle are just straight up fun to listen to and belt out (and fun to say). I can listen to this man in any mood, happy or sad, and still love it all the same. Howlin’ Wolf is a legend in pretty much every sense of the word, and I’m forever grateful for his contributions to music and the lasting impact he had on it.

Hi Sorry State readers! Hope you all enjoyed some time off and relaxed a little. I’m kinda struggling with small talk relevant to last week, so let’s just not. But it is nice to see you again!

This week I’ve been enjoying the debut EP from Phil & the Tiles, a six-piece band hailing from Melbourne, Australia. First, let’s just get something out of the way. No one in the band is named Phil. Now we can move on.

It’s definitely on brand for me to sniff out the new post-punky titles, but I was also entranced by the colorful psychedelic artwork on this one. Either way, I’m into it. It’s a fresh take on post-punk with swirls of psychedelic sounds. It also has some new wave and power pop moments, and it all works really well together.

The most buzzed about track is Nun’s Dream. It’s about a nun having dirty, filthy dreams and wakes up plagued with shame and guilt. Frankly she’s being a little hard on herself. Anyways, if you’ve heard one nun shame story, you’ve heard them all. But the vocal interplay between the singer and back up vocalist sounds good and works best on this track. Normally I’m not a fan of that unless your name is Pixies or Sonic Youth, but I gave it a few more listens and now I really like it. It’s also the most power pop song on the record and has some cool synthy moments.

Personally I enjoy the song Health/Body more. It’s the punkier track on the album and more abrasive than the others, but it’s not at all out of place. It’s for sure the right choice for an opening track. It also flows really well into the next track, Elixir, which starts out sounding kinda like a Pixies track from Doolittle. It’s the most new-wave sounding of the bunch. The closer, Trepanation, is another favorite. It shifts toward the jangly melodic pop sounds of early 80s alt rock. You wouldn’t mistake it for The Cure or REM, but there’s something in there that feels familiar to that particular transition in music.

Overall, something I enjoy about this record is that the band draws from different styles and sounds, from the synth to the psychedelic, but it’s not overpowering. It’s just enough to freshen things up a bit.

I like it. It’s cool. Give it a try.

Thanks for reading. See ya next week!

-Angela

Hello and thanks for reading! Today I write about HORRID PEACE, a brand-new band from Richmond. I think this is more of a studio project, or at least that’s the way it was intended to be initially. They debut here with 4 tracks of heavy, fuzzed out Dis-beat on also brand-new label, Acute Noise Manufacture! ANM is a Richmond based label that is operated by the bassist of DESTRUCT, Patrick. He also plays bass on this release. He is not the only member from DESTRUCT involved in this project though; drummer Alex takes on vocal duties in HORRID PEACE. Knowing this band features members of powerhouse DESTRUCT, you can probably get an idea of what you’re getting into here, however HORRID PEACE has a bit more of “traditional” approach to things, with more straight-forward songwriting. I hear some serious influences from early-mid era DOOM, alongside maybe some 90s Japanese crust. Up next on ANM is a DESTRUCT 7", and I cannot wait for that! Alright I’ve got to run now.. thanks for reading, and check out this EP!

Hey everyone! Here we are again with another Sorry State Newsletter after the Thanksgiving break. We hope you are all doing well out there and as always we appreciate you reading this and for your support. With so much to distract our attentions these days, it means a lot that you chose to spend a few minutes with us each week.

I’ve had plenty to keep my mind occupied these past two weeks with the World Cup going on. I know there are many issues with Qatar being selected as the host country and FIFA as an organization, but it’s still the World Cup, the most important part of the sporting calendar for most of the world, and something that I love watching. With the time zone difference, I haven’t managed to get up at 4 AM to watch the early games, but try to catch as much of the other games as possible. A little tricky at work, but I keep a screen going and my phone updating me. Then at night it’s watching recorded games and the pundit shows to get the complete story. So, a little less music listening than usual, although I do often like to watch games with the sound down and something playing. For the radio show Worldy that I do over at The Face Radio, we have been trying to play records from all 32 countries involved in the World Cup and as many footie records that we have. My partner Matt, who is a soccer coach here, has some great football related records. For the first full day of the competition, the other Monday, we were on air for a marathon six-hour session. Those shows and our others are available in the Face archives should you be interested. I thought we had a fun one last week with the selections we picked. One record that I played was something that I pulled from a collection of 80s 12-inch singles we recently bought, and it seemed to fit in well with the flow of the show.

It’s by Doc Ti and called Block Party, released on Next Plateau Records in 1987. A nice slice of electro hip-hop that was rapper Doc Ti’s second release. As with most 12-inch singles from the era, this one comes backed with an instrumental version of the song, and that’s something that I always enjoy getting. I can’t tell you much about Doc Ti other than his real name is Tony Pruden, he’s from New York, and he has released music under his real name.

This cut is cool though, and with all the block parties going on around the country and rest of the world as people gather to watch the games, an appropriate choice I thought. Check it out here and see what you think. The sample used is Drop The Bomb by Trouble Funk along with a couple of other soundbites dropped in, like the chorus from It’s A Shame by The Spinners.

Not much of a staff pick from me again this week which I apologize for, but I promise if you listen to the Worldy shows, you’ll hear some good shit. And if you come visit us at the store, I’ll point you towards even more cool stuff. We have the records, no doubt.

Cheers - Dom

What’s up Sorry Staters?

Wow, is this my first newsletter back since I went to London? Kinda wild. That trip already feels like it happened a while ago. I’m already back in the swing of things here at the good ol’ SSR. I had such a blast with my Acid in London, not to mention all the cool people I got to hang out with during Damage Is Done fest. Ola did such a great a job with the fest and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend a long weekend in London. Hot groups tearin’ it up, 2 of the best record stores I’ve ever visited in my life, oh and of course a crew of people taking mushrooms and pounding Buckfast in a park at 4am. Good times.

So now on to talking about my so-called staff pick. It might be low-hanging fruit, but I’m gonna talk about the Stains reissue. Should “reissue” be in finger quotes? When Daniel told me, much to his surprise as well, that Sorry State would be stocking a brand spankin’ new version of the legendary 1983 debut by the LA Stains, I thought to myself: “FINALLY.” The Stains LP has gained a lot of mystique you might say, in part because it’s one of the major early SST releases that has never been back in print since the 80s. Criminal, if you ask me, because the record is GOOD. Top shelf in my book. I threw on my copy again recently, inspired by the excitement surrounding this long-awaited reissue. Hate to use this turn of phrase, but this is another one of those greatly underappreciated hardcore records. Not unlike many SST releases, in-house engineer Spot worked on the Stains record – and you can tell. You can hear that dirgey, Black Flag-esque production in the guitar sound. But compared to other bands on SST, The Stains were just meaner, grittier, more frantic, more powerful, more unhinged. And why don’t more people feel this way? I would have to guess it’s because the record hasn’t been maintained in the historical consciousness of punk.

Almost like an accidentally well-kept secret of 80s LA hardcore, I think for a long time people weren’t really familiar with the record. I’ve heard a lot of stories from dudes a few years older than me who said you’d come across original copies used for like $20. Then one day, it cost more like $100, and in the post-pandemic record fiend economy, people are trying to sell the record for insane prices. But with no announcement, no advertisement, no warning, suddenly distro copies are available? Did SST finally cave and make this thing happen? Sorry State tried to get as many copies as we could, but ended up only being able to stock a handful. Of course, they sold out instantaneously. I could have called it ahead of time, but depending on how many copies SST produced, naturally there were not nearly enough copies available to satisfy the demand. Weirdly, it’s starting to feel like the reissue is becoming instantly hard to find, much like what happened with the original record. Which would really suck.

But that’s when the conspiracies started… If you haven’t been following along, let me fill you in: First thing I saw was people on the internet not even believing the reissue was real. Buuuut, obviously it is. People are buying them. I saw Sorry State’s copies with my own 2 eyes haha. The next thing was that people were saying these copies are actually bootlegs. Which is silly. They came from SST with their other titles, and if Greg Ginn was stocking a recently produced bootleg, then that would be totally hilarious. Then I started seeing several people purporting the idea that these Stains records that popped up out of the ether are not even reissues at all. Rather, maybe they are actually well-preserved deadstock copies that have been sitting in SST warehouses since the 80s. I could see where someone could get this impression. Apparently, the matrix is exactly the same as the original and the jacket layout is pretty convincing. On the internet, a bunch of people have been like, “It even still says $6.98 on the spine.” Which like, yeah cool, I guess. I dunno, I’m under the impression SST just used the same plates to press not nearly enough copies, and then reproduced the exact same jacket layout out of laziness. When I compare it to my 80s copy, the new jacket just seems too glossy and flimsy anyways. As I’m writing this I don’t have my copy in front of me to double check, but I can’t remember if mine’s a tip-on sleeve, but it definitely feels heavier. But then maybe the bigger ring indentation pressing of the first press is different from the 1987 pressing… Whatever, nerd shit. I have no idea. Maybe I’m wrong and these totally are 1987 deadstock copies.

Anyway, from afar, I’ve found the online frenzy surrounding this “reissue” (yep, finger quotes) wildly entertaining. Who knows? Maybe Lord Ginn will emerge from the shadows and illuminate us all with answers to this mystery. Until then, I really just fuckin’ hope that people who have been wanting this record for a long time (and for a reasonable price) can finally get their hands on it. That’s the point, right?

Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me for one week. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Stains: S/T 12” (SST, 1983)

The Stains’ 1983 full-length on SST Records has been the subject of a lot of internet chatter over the past couple of weeks. I’ve found this chatter both entertaining and frustrating, so I chose the Stains as my staff pick this week in order to fill you in on as much of the story as I am privy to.

Here’s the background info. The Stains LP was SST’s 10th release, recorded in 1981 but released in 1983, presumably because of SST’s notorious cash flow problems in their early years. While I think most people today think of the Stains as a hardcore-era band, they started in the 70s and were contemporaries of the Masque bands and the original Hollywood punk bands, and you’ll see their name on many flyers from that era. Black Flag were big admirers of the Stains, and while, thanks to the release dates, many people assumed the Stains were influenced by Black Flag, it seems just as likely that the influence ran in the other direction. In particular, guitarist Robert Becerra’s expressive playing, full of long, psychedelically bent notes, sounds a lot like Greg Ginn’s playing on Black Flag’s later material.

I was lucky enough to buy my copy of the Stains LP in the early 2000s, when it was much less expensive than it is now. If I remember correctly, I paid around $50 for it. It’s always been difficult to find, but its stock has risen in the intervening years, and the median price on Discogs now sits at $400 for the first pressing. There are several factors at play here. While there was little to no information out there about the Stains when I first bought this album, the past several years have seen a mini-documentary about the band on YouTube and a lengthy cover feature in Razorcake magazine, both of which helped to fill in some of that context. An important part of that context is that the Stains, while they played a lot in Hollywood, were from East LA and all the members were Latino, something I rarely, if ever, saw remarked upon before a few years ago. With so much interest in voices from marginalized communities, the Stains’ story was even more enticing to younger punks. The internet has also allowed a lot more people to hear the record, and it’s so undeniably great that as soon you hear it, you want a copy. The record hasn’t been repressed since 1987, even as a bootleg, so higher demand plus no more copies available equals the prices of originals rising through the roof.

That all changed last week when news emerged that SST had repressed this record. I heard about the repress earlier than most people, because I was sitting at my desk working when an email arrived from one of our distributors saying a pallet just arrived from SST. I looked at the email immediately because SST releases have been impossible to get for the past few years. SST’s distribution has always been erratic, but lately the supply seems to have evaporated completely. The problem is so bad that pressings of their classic records from just a few years ago are selling for big money on Discogs. People want the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime so badly that they’re willing to plunk down over a hundred bucks for a copy pressed in the 2010s. Crazy!

As I’m scanning the list of what the distributor got in stock, I saw the Stains LP listed and jumped out of my chair. That was the first inkling I’d gotten that the LP was available again. I put together an order and asked them for 50 copies of both Double Nickels on the Dime and the Stains LP (I would have gone for 100 or more, but SST releases are expensive). A few hours later, they wrote back saying they put those two releases on their website and they sold out, and that I wouldn’t get any copies of either. No real surprise there, but I was disappointed. However, when our order shipped, there were 5 copies of the Stains LP on the invoice, though when the order arrived there were only 3 (and 2 extra copies of Black Flag’s Annihilate This Week single… eyeroll emoji). Two copies were claimed by Sorry State staffers, and the other one sold. I’ve been hitting up every distributor who carries SST releases trying to source more, but no luck yet. Rest assured that, given the opportunity, I’ll get as many copies as I can for Sorry State.

This story wouldn’t be worth writing about in my staff pick, except that SST’s chaotic rollout made the 80s hardcore record collecting internet explode with speculation and misinformation. It’s funny, I think a lot of labels would kill (or at least pay a lot of money) to generate this kind of hype, but SST has done it, apparently unintentionally, just through the bizarre opacity of their decision-making.

A lot of this confusion stems from a post on the Stains Facebook page, which speculates that the release is a bootleg or dead stock copies. The post’s main evidence for that claim seems to be that it doesn’t appear on SST’s website, but given SST’s chaotic approach to pretty much everything, it’s not surprising they haven’t updated their website. The evidence that this is a new pressing from SST is much stronger. First, the distributor who carried them said they arrived on a pallet direct from SST full of other SST releases, which they put up for sale at the same time. It would take a complex conspiracy for that to be incorrect… either they bootlegged an entire range of SST releases, or they sat with this bootleg waiting in the wings until a shipment arrived from SST (that coincidentally also contained a bunch of other SST releases that hadn’t been available for years). The matrix etchings also indicate that they pressed this new version from the same plates as the original release, and it’s unlikely anyone but SST would have access to those.

The post also implies this release is a bootleg because the band wasn’t involved, but anyone who listens to the SST-focused podcast You Don’t Know Mojack knows that Greg Ginn always insisted on the rights to releases in perpetuity. The Stains’ singer even acknowledges in the mini-documentary that SST owns the rights to the record, and by all accounts, SST is not in the habit of keeping in touch with the musicians whose work they own. The Stains may not like the fact that SST has repressed the record without their knowledge or input, but that doesn’t make it a bootleg.

The Facebook post also speculates that these might be dead stock copies, and I’ve seen other people repeat this claim as fact. However, it’s dead wrong. If you hold one of those things in your hands, it’s clear it’s not a dead stock copy from 1987 (the last time SST pressed the record). We deal in dead stock records all the time at Sorry State, and we know a 35-year-old sealed record when we see one. This isn’t one… the weight, color, and texture of the paper are dead giveaways. Plus, it just doesn’t make sense that someone would sell a ton of sealed dead stock copies for a tiny, tiny fraction of what they sell for on the secondary market.

TL;DR version: SST repressed the Stains album, but they’re rolling out it out in a fashion that’s chaotically opaque, which is typical of SST. While the randomness of it all has people freaking out, I’m pretty sure that, with some time, copies will continue to drip through SST’s Willy Wonka supply chain and you’ll have the opportunity to buy one. Patience is the record collector’s best friend.

Oh yeah, funny side note about my copy. Ten years or so ago a bunch of people were partying at my house and I put on this record. It started skipping, and I was so bummed. I thought it had gotten warped sitting on my shelf. I started looking for a replacement copy, but never found one at a price I wanted to pay. Then, a year or so ago, I decided to check how bad the warp was. The record played fine! Either it flattened itself out sitting on my shelf (which seems impossible), or I was tipsy and didn’t lay the record down flat on the turntable at that party. I deprived myself of a decade of listening to this on vinyl for no reason at all!

Balta: Rendszerszintű Agybaszás 7" (La Vida Es Un Mus) Now this is what the fuck I’m talking about! La Vida Es Un Mus reaches its ever-probing tendrils into eastern Europe (Budapest, Hungary to be precise) and plucks out a recording that sounds like Sonic the Hedgehog destroying a low-budget recording studio with a sledgehammer. It’s seven tracks of wild, reckless abandon, and I can’t get enough of it. Rendszerszintű Agybaszás serves as an interesting contrast to the Innocent LP I also wrote about this week. While both are excellent hardcore records, they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their overall feel and their approaches to the genre: everywhere Innocent is considered, composed, and precise, Balta is chaotic and impulsive. Balta has a single-minded devotion to constant, paint-peeling intensity, and there’s no letup in tempo or volume to be found on Rendszerszintű Agybaszás… it’s just a uniform lunge toward oblivion without break or modulation. Capturing a feeling like this on a record is difficult (try recording yourself stabbing incoherently at a guitar for 45 seconds and see how interesting it sounds) and it only happens rarely, so when people like me who crave this kind of unhinged musical release find a record with the goods, we snap it up without a second thought. If you’re one of us, I urge you to do the same.

Hi Sorry State people! I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy! I just got over some weird flu-ish type thing that knocked me down for a couple days. Happy to be back at it with the staff picks and listening to a ton of new music in general.

This week’s pick was pretty easy, and it’s Cherry Cheeks S/T. Emerging from the pandemic, this is a solo project created by Kyle Harms. While some of us were deep in the throes of depression and produced nothing more ambitious than breathing and blinking, this dude was harnessing his creativity and putting in the work. It sounds like a punk album dipped in pop. Just a quick dip to give the music some bounce, but without totally diminishing the frustration and general displeasure with life that likely fueled the creation of the record.

The songs are all really high energy with interesting sounds that work well together. It’s super hooky and bass-driven with some great melodic moments, and simple, catchy choruses. There are a few tracks that sound a bit samesy, and the overall tempo doesn’t change much. I also think the album is back-loaded, but there isn’t a song on the album that I dislike.

I guess this is egg punk, but songs like Boxes sound much cleaner and sharper than your typical egg punk. Security is another solid track that’s reminiscent of good old classic punk. Trickin’ is a song that flips the switch and sounds much more erratic, but it’s also the most fun to listen to. The chorus is undeniably infectious. But if that’s not your thing, there are plenty of tracks that keep things from getting too eggy. I don’t dislike egg punk at all, but I fucking hate the name egg punk. It’s almost enough to keep me from listening to it just to prevent discussions that may require me to say egg punk too many times out loud.

The song Gone is a great closer to the album, and for me it’s the standout track. It’s different from the other songs and this is where the distortion is more apparent. It also has a late 70s synthy new wave feel to it, and on this track Kyle Harms sounds like an unhinged version of Rick Ocasek.

Overall, this Cherry Cheeks album is really enjoyable. You may not bring it to the proverbial desert island, but throw it on when you have to clean your house and I promise you will feel less miserable.

Thanks for reading! See ya next time…

-Angela

Hello and thanks for reading. Does RAT CAGE need an introduction? They first hit the scene in 2016 with their demo. While the style on this demo is what you can pretty much consistently expect from the one-man machine, he really picks up speed and locks in even tighter as RAT CAGE progresses. Admittedly, I had never listened to the demo until today. The songs are great, and I love the ‘raw’ sound that is not typical for his releases that followed. When I think of RAT CAGE, I usually associate it with top-notch production that sounds like it’s about to hit the red. I first heard them on their vinyl debut ‘Caged Like Rats.’ The six tracks of blazing hardcore really caught my ear, and it had me waiting for more! They followed up with a four track EP after that really hit the spot for me, ‘Blood On Your Boots.’ The songs on this one are just nasty. Following the EP, they released the LP ‘Screams From The Cage’ and I think anyone that had been under a rock for the previous releases had RAT CAGE’s full attention. The tightness, the groove, the riffs, the speed, the pissed-off vocals... ahhhhhh!! RAT CAGE of course didn’t stop there, soon after they followed up with a monumental split with another one-man D-beat machine from Macedonia, NERVOUS SS. This is the best split I have heard in who knows how long... It made my “Top 10” list of 2021 and it was also dubbed Record of the Week by Daniel. Before the year was over, RAT CAGE released a two-song banger as a benefit for their space The Lughole. The release was only a small run of 50 lathe-cuts entitled ‘In The Shadow Of The Bomb.’ Those are probably impossible to find now, and LVEUM has just properly released these songs for us all on a 7"! While RAT CAGE is a band that perfectly combines speed and catchiness, he busts out kind of a new vibe on the A side of this 7". The melody comes off rather “epic” instead of “catchy”. On the B side you can find a pit-opening, pure head banger track. There is a reason why LVEUM has given this 7" a proper press, so check it out and grab one if it strikes your ear, as well as the other RAT CAGE releases that our now back in print! Before I go, I’d like to mention something else that I am not sure I’ve mentioned here. Later this year there will be a 4-way split 12" featuring RAT CAGE, DISSEKERAD, DESTRUCT, and SCARECROW. It’s going to be insane… wait til you hear the tracks!!! Keep your eyes and ears peeled for that shit, out in 2023 on BPDT and Skrammel Records. Alright then, thanks for reading and thanks to everyone for the support!

What’s up Sorry State friends? Thanks for taking the time to check in with us and read the newsletter. We’ll be away for Thanksgiving next week, but that isn’t stopping the cogs from turning here at Sorry State Industries. We are preparing the Record Store Day Black Friday releases for that weekend and each day brings packages from our label and distributor friends full of new releases and key restocks. Lots to process and that’s just the new product. We have been out buying used records too, and Daniel has been racking up some road miles traveling to and fro, scoring some killer vintage vinyl. Those of you that can make it into the store will be seeing the fruits of these travels each week in our new used arrivals bins. Cool.

I unfortunately write with a heavy heart this week as one of my beautiful cats passed away. She died suddenly and before her time but mercifully did not suffer. I’m honestly gutted and very sad. Her name was Kate and she and I had a very close and special bond. I loved the shit out of that girl and perhaps because I don’t have family and close friends near me, I project all my emotions at her and my other cats. They are my family. I feel such a sense of loss and will be raw with grief for a while.

That being said, this is our newsletter, and you came here looking for suggestions on good records to listen to and not to be bummed out by my sadness. So on with the show.

I am not sure how many of you are sports fans and care, but in a couple of days the World Cup begins in Qatar. There’s lots to discuss about the how and why of FIFA selecting Qatar as the host, and there’s also plenty to talk about when it comes to the human rights records of the region, especially the treatment of the LBGT community. Also, the circumstances that have meant the tournament takes place in the winter and interrupts many countries’ domestic football seasons. All of that you’ll have to discuss amongst yourselves and read and watch on your favorite sports channels, but I will say that I do follow football and enjoy the World Cup and hope that hosting the competition in Qatar will have a positive effect on the region.

For our radio show, Worldy, this coming Monday, Matt and I are having a marathon six-hour World Cup themed show. We’ll be playing music from all or as many as we can of the 32 countries taking part. Starting at 10 AM EST. That Monday has England and USA playing their respective first group games, so it should be a fun and interesting time.

I wish Jamaica had qualified, because then I could really say that my staff pick was completely appropriate, but they didn’t this time. However, I still have to select Scientist Wins The World Cup as my choice this week. The cover art alone qualifies it even if the music is dub reggae from Jamaica. With the mood I have been in this week, it has been tough to find the right music to listen to. I’m not quite ready to rage with anger to punk rock and I am not wanting to listen to super sad loner folk either. Instrumental music is the answer, and good dub reggae will always hit the spot. As this record was pulled and sitting out, I put it on the turntable, and when the needle hit the groove and the music began, I immediately felt good. This is the stuff alright.

Originally released back in 1982 on the great Greensleeves label with ten tracks simply titled ten dangerous matches, this was one of several albums Scientist released during the early 1980s that are considered dub classics. All had great titles and jacket art to go along with it. To name a few, Heavyweight Dub Champion and Big Showdown have a boxing theme, Meets The Space Invaders and Encounters Pac-Man have video game references, and the classic Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires, which obviously has a horror and Halloween theme. That last one seems to be the one people always mention and possibly is the highest profile of the series based on some of the tracks appearing in modern video games.

They’re all great records. Hopeton “Scientist” Brown, the protégé of King Tubby and Bunny Lee and contemporary of Prince Jammy, was at his creative peak during this period. He recorded mostly with The Roots Radics band at Channel One Studio, where he was the principal engineer, and with vocals from some of the best singers around. On World Cup, vocals come from Johnny Osbourne, Hugh Mundell and Wayne Jarrett, all top talents. Additional production assistance comes from Junjo Lawes, another top engineer and producer who cut his teeth at King Tubby’s.

The cover art features The Roots Radics beating England 6-1 in a football match in a great painting by Tony McDermott, whose artwork featured on countless reggae records and helped define the look of Greensleeves releases. Despite the football themed title and cover, there isn’t too much musically that would make you think about the beautiful game. The songs used for the dubs are almost all love songs or songs that were about lost love. Typical with dub versions, the songs used are begun with the vocal part to set the song up and inform the listener of the base used, but after a bar or two the vocals are faded out and then the mixing board skills of Scientist kick in. Pure genius from the man. Everything is top notch from the source material used, the musicians and singers who cut the tunes, to the studio and equipment used. You can rest assured that when you pick any record with Scientist’s name on it that the sound will be great.

It might have been great if some sound effects from football matches and crowd noise had been included, but there is an argument that then the record would only have limited listening potential. As it is, you don’t have to know anything about football to appreciate this album. With the mood of sadness I was in this week, songs about broken hearts were quite appropriate. Highlights are many, but album opener Dangerous Match One is crucial, with a bass line for the ages, and should be a good enough reason to listen if nothing else. The dub based on Johnny Osbourne’s Ice Cream Love is a great additional dub that came out on expanded versions of the album as Extra Time tracks, which are all just as good as the original ten tracks. I highly recommend you investigate the rest of the album and any of the Scientist albums from the period. They’re all fire. As with a lot of great music, originals can be expensive and hard to find, but luckily there are reissues and digital sources these days for everyone to get their fix depending on their budget and listening habits. My copy of World Cup is a reissue that has six of the extra tracks included and doesn’t sound too bad. I have originals of some Scientist records but will take them in any form to get the music rather than be without when they are this good.

Go check this one out and enjoy the World Cup.

Cheers - Dom

The Blood: False Gestures for a Devious Public LP (1983, Noise Records)

1983’s False Gestures for a Devious Public is the first full-length record by London’s the Blood. I’ve owned this record for years, but it’s been getting a lot of play time lately, for reasons I will explain below. I should also note that we have in stock a collection called Total Megalomania on Radiation Records the features all the tracks I write about here, so if you dig ‘em, that’s a worthy pickup.

I can’t recall when I first heard the Blood, but their two singles, 1983’s Megalomania (No Future Records) and Stark Raving Normal (Noise Records) have been favorites for many, many years. If I recall correctly, I first heard “Stark Raving Normal” on some punk compilation or another, but when I heard “Megalomania,” that’s when things clicked. “Megalomania” is a monster track, from its resplendent piano intro to its blistering, Machine Gun Etiquette-esque pace, to the sublime octave chords in the song’s main instrumental hook. It’s an all-time favorite song, and if you haven’t heard it, check it out… if you don’t like it, then you can stop right here because the Blood’s output doesn’t get any better.

Once “Megalomania” got its hooks in, I starting pulling whatever threads I could latch onto, which is what I do when I find a song or a record I like. The first order of business, of course, is to get the band’s releases from the same period, and I grabbed this 1990 red vinyl reissue of False Gestures for a Devious Publicon Link Records. I remember getting it in the mail, listening to it, and thinking, “well, that’s not as good as ‘Megalomania,’” and putting it on my shelf, where it has stayed since then. That opinion got canonized in my mind, and if you asked me what I thought of False Gestures for a Devious Public, I would have told you the Blood had lost the plot by then and it wasn’t worth the trouble.

What was I thinking?

I’ve been revisiting records I haven’t played in a while, and I got curious about False Gestures and threw it on. On that listen, my opinion began to change. I noticed some of the wild Captain Sensible-esque lead guitar lines that are such a big part of the singles’ appeal, and while the vocal melodies on tracks like “Done Some Brain Cells Last Nite” and “Degenerate” felt broad, others like “Well Sick” and “Waste of Flesh and Bone” could stand next to the classic singles. Internally, I revised my opinion to “False Gestures is OK, but the production is crummy and the songwriting is uneven.”

Then, earlier this week, the album came up on shuffle while I was driving, and I listened to it again. Apparently a third listen was what I needed, because somewhere in there my opinion got revised to “this fucking rules.” I still think the production is lacking, but that’s mostly because the album suffers compared to “Megalomania.” That is such a perfectly produced single, and it’s easy to imagine how some of the clever guitar overdubs and other touches like the saxophone in “Sewer Brain” would have hit way harder on False Gestures if its recording had the same level of care and attention to detail. But, even if its not rendered in crisp hi-def, it’s all there, and the Blood is still raging on this record, which sounds good enough if you crank it real loud. If you love Machine Gun Etiquette as much as I do, “Well Sick” and the epic “Waste of Flesh and Bone” scratch that same epic / melodic / psychedelic punk itch.

Biographical details about the Blood are scant. They were from London and there’s a story, which way or may not be true, of Stinky Turner from the Cockney Rejects “discovering” them on the top level of a double-decker bus. I pulled down my copy of Burning Britain hoping to find a chapter on the band, but they only get a brief mention in the chapter on No Future Records, which confirms their reputation as hard partiers. Label boss Chris Berry relates the story of the band getting shithoused at the contract singing for the Megalomania single, after which No Future decided the band was more trouble than they were worth. After being unenthused with False Gestures on my first listen, I never bothered checking out the follow-up 12”, 1985’s Se Parare Nex, but those tracks are on the aforementioned Total Megalomania collection. The Blood carried on into the 90s and 00s, but judging by some of their song and album titles, they may have leaned further into the “shock rock” element of their sound, and unless someone confirms for me that these releases are worth investigating, I’ll carry on assuming they’re not.