GbV 'Crying Yr Knife Away' REMASTER

so th incredible (and incredibly driven) (no pun intended) mr. analog loyalist over at the power of independent trucking blog has applied his usual whupass remastering service to this classic-era-defining live set. not a thing needs to be said to recommend that you download this asap but lemme say two things: i remember (barely) walking from bela's to stache's that day (rolling rock in hand) as detailed in th liner notes and th guy you hear constantly yelling "bobby!" from th audience is th one & only travis f., who th gbv dudes just fucking couldn't get enough of. i'll have travis's phony phone call tape from around this time posted here shortly…

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Black Horse and Other Strange Stories, Jason A. Wyckoff

so i run into pat dull at th laughing ogre (turns out he has a conan fixation) th other day an' while shooting yon proverbial SHIZ he mentions that jake from clay & flipping hades wrote a book and that while he bought it cuz hey he knows th guy when he started reading it he found it very quickly to be VERY FUCKING GOOD and in fact he was carrying it around right there that very day. so i sez hey i think i heard Q (manytime bandmate of jake's) say something aboot that th other nite, i'll check it out. an' i did, ordered it just that very week from jake himself and while it wasn't cheap (only 300 printed, top quality, in th UK no less) it turns out that it is REALLY FUCKING GOOD, i mean stellar, in my top five short stories books (an' i fucking LOVE short stories books) with a bullet (

TOP FIVE BOOKS OF SHORT STORIES

• Honeymoon and Other Stories, Kevin Canty
• Magic For Beginners, Kelly Link
• Wall Of The Sky/Wall Of The Eye, Jonathan Lethem
• Strange Wine, Harlan Ellison
• this here tome of which we speak

) fer shirley! if yr wondering what makes this one tick well yr first three guesses (autobio, jokes, rock) would be way off th (proverbial, again) mark since jake has crafted a creepy compendium (that's alliteration, babe) of - you guessed it - strange tales, which would be not out of place converted to comic form in th pages of a (hurry up an' do it) revamped 'weird fantasy' book. jake's gotta little lovecraft an' a little king to his step, without sounding at all like either, an' if he indeed made a list of all th' stock tales (sasquatch, vampires, death-ballads-come-true, &c.) he could turn on their fucking heads beforehand, i wouldn't be surprised, tho' right from th ease-em-in start he's treading territory entirely his own. i can't recommend this book highly enuff (ok mebbe i can) - nevermind th price tag, you will not be anything but blown away.

available from jake (best for US orders)

available from his publisher (best for UK orders)

Greenlawn Abbey

there's a line in a gaunt song that goes "i just want to listen to the shoes" and i can tell ya for a fact that jerry wasn't lying when he said that but methinks perhaps our friends in greenlawn abbey took that one step farther and ONLY listened to the shoes. tony's voice is a dead ringer for a murphy brother and the same pre-cars powerpop sensibilities are there, tho' greenlawn out-rocks shoes about 5-to-1 here with some serious cheap trick-isms all over these two discs. savvy listeners will also no doubt recognize - despite all attempts at anachronism on th part of th band - that this is music written post-"everything flows"; above th wham/bam recording approach and th one-two-and-we're-off-again arrangements, compositionally these tunes are on a par with the posies and are most probably better than anything velvet crush ever eked out (tho' as a hearty not-fan, i haven't listened to them in many a season) - and in all honesty th disregard for perfection (esp. on their first disc) lays bare an action-rock aesthetic that a lotta powerpoopers sadly eschew in favor of dullsville late-zombies perfectionism. greenlawn also have a fucking ace-in-the-hole in bassplayer matt davey and his rare-yet-always-wicked minor key good-sebadoh-meets-evil-treepeople ravers.

these days th three original dudes sometimes show up backing chris burney as dead indians, but are evidently completely tired of playing their own tunes anymore.

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Kevyn And The Kasualties

Kevyn and the Kasualties‘ first LP is ambivalent even before you put it on: one side is labeled “Punk?” and the other is “Pop?” Pathology on vinyl is always better with a crack rhythm section and Kevyn had Nudge Squidfish and Rudy Krash n Burn (not real names heh heh). They went on to form V3 after this release which shows that at least Jim Shepard was listening to this confused, heartrending, and ass-kicking LP. Like more than a few post-punkers in the mid-eighties, Kevyn was torn between Hardcore’s demand for manly toughness and Alternative’s feeble plea for originality. Four songs on the punk side are disquisitions on his aesthetics; as he sings in-the-pocket punk in his nasally midwest Johnny Thunders style all he can sing about is punk. Injustice for Kevyn struck home only where his music was. “Let’s Kill R-N-R.” “Screw FM.” For a man determined to be “Drunk Loud and Obnoxious” there is something almost polite and modest in his ambitions.

He opens up more on the “Pop?” side where Nudge especially helps him forge a powerful pop punk mini opera. (Gary Reeve produced it and avoids the common reverby pitfalls of the era.) All the songs focus on love and feature crackerjack arrangements that are minimally but tastefully abetted by organ and wah-wah. On the “Holy Trinity” he might overextend and leave us Protestants glad we got we rid of that shit but even that song has an assurance lacking in Kevyn’s next, less overlooked album on Okra.

-Ron House

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