12 May 2012

Dirty Mouth

dirty mouth is in a lotta ways easily th best band in col's right now (even if it's simply because i can't think of one other band that's actually any fun*). their songs are all super good, they don't get bogged down in their politics, and they even have a good time scorching th shit out of a nirvana cover. all you Serious Punx™ take note: this is how it's done.

new demo

first demo for free on bandcamp

*except hookers made out of cocaine, who are also fucking amazing.

08 May 2012

Gut Piston 45

same time i grabbed th recently-posted gut piston demo from '92 i got this 45 on eardrop from '95 - kind of a banner year in col's rock'n'scuzz and this here seven-incher belongs right up there on th short list of th era's TOP HITZ.

download

The Embarrassment Vinyl & Tapes

well mebbe this'll be aboot as far-out - distance-wise - as we'll ever get here at mtf, but who knows. we can of course do WHATEVER WE WANT. but in any case for a whole messa reasons an embos post isn't th most insane thing for a mostly-col's, ohio blog: they was good friends (and after-th-fact labelmates) with our own great plains, a coupla th songs on their 'retrospective' cassette were taped in oh (at mr. brown's and the jockey club, tho' i've heard some o' that liner info is errant), and th ass ponys, bein' giganto fans, even covered their way-perfect "two week vacation" (a song that inspired me to declare th embos my numero uno fave-rave heroes even tho' it was YEARS before i even managed to track down another track. erm.), for three. plusly nobody ever seems to look at our sister-(non-oh)-blog terminal '75 anyhow, so i figure in th interest of anyone at all seein' this i oughta put it here.

lest ye think me/us completely without purpose allow me to explain th very grand purposefulality of this here post. so, despite th fact that th embos are TH BEST BAND OF EVERTIMES, their recorded history has been documented, actually. (i know. quelle surprise!) BUT, this documentation (thankful as i am for it) hasn't been without its flaws. chief among these over/undersights is th fact that their big ol' double-disc history lesson ('heyday'), apart from being allowed to lapse out of print (shame!), was saddled with th crispest, leanest, wackiest remixing/remastering ever to grace th hallowed halls of my late and so sorely not-missed old portable cd player. but since th first disc of that set is made up basically of 94.3% of th material off their originally-released-on-vinyl output, here i've made a file of those original needle-drops*. however, where they inserted th KILLER "two cars" (also available on th 'retro' tape, wait for it) i've included instead th never-ever available otherwise studio version of "pushin' too hard" from th first 'battle of the garages' comp.

second file here is my original transfer of th 'retrospective' cassette, plus "sound of wasps" directly from th subpop 7 cassette. lotsa these tunes ended up on 'heyday' (and some were even these versions. i think.), but in my not-so-humble opinion this one squash them like grape. you know.

should th citizens of yon blogosphere rattle their prison chains loudly enough (and th embos camp don' protest) perhaps i could be conned into posting some of th next-level rarities i have around and/or a smattering of live sets (and even mebbe disc two of 'heyday' and th 'blister pop' comp).

vinyl
tapes

*first single ripped from 2011 test press edition (small hole) reissue on last laugh; 'embarrassment ep' ripped from first side of 1987 issue 'embarrassment lp'.

UPDATE!! from mr. adam smith of columbus discount recording and many fab combos (necropolis, unholy 2) around these parts comes - esp for an embos geek of my, uh, high order - nothing short of a total revelation via donewaiting:

I did the restoration work on the master tapes for the sex drive reissue that came out on last laugh. I'm currently doing the restoration on the master for the S/T ep. The masters for these records sound fantastic. Tons of bass. So, that got me thinking about the bad sound quality on the heyday stuff, the "crispest, leanest, wackiest remixing/remastering ever to grace th hallowed halls of my late and so sorely not-missed old portable cd player" You're totally right, that stuff sounds like garbage. The difference between the half track masters and the heyday cd is just too drastic for a bad mastering job to make sense. I've got to think that no mastering engineer in his right mind would mess up a track that bad. So, my current hypothesis on the bad master on heyday is that it wasn't a bad master at all, instead, the master tape to digital transfer was done incorrectly. All of the embos masters that were done at Fort Apache, even the live in studio stuff, was mixed through a Dolby A noise reduction unit. Those Dolby A units were about $2000 per stereo unit in their day, so they aren't all that easy to come by now. It took me a couple of weeks to track one down to do the Sex Drive job. I suspect that when the transfers from the master tapes were done for heyday, they weren't decoded using a Dolby A unit, instead they were just put on a 1/4" tape deck and run into whatever digital unit the transfer guy had. To experiment, I threw the S/T E.P. masters on my MCI 1/4" deck, set it up to the tones on the tape and didn't decode the playback w/ Dolby A. Bam!, all thin and crispy. Dolby A in, a beautiful mix that kinda sounds like a Thin Lizzy record.

so there ya have it, a doublemajor mystery solved!!

01 May 2012

them guys boardin' again?

thought i'd better get a photo of this rad mark heintzman reish on assault skates before i wear th ohio completely off th ketchup bottle. mark won th nsa amateur championship held at th ohio state fair th year i moved back here (still th only contest i've ever attended). they even had it on th news (with "you're beat" by m.o.d. playing in th background! who pulled that one off??). his part in th g&s vid 'footage' rips and th last thing he does is hit a ledge (now unskatable due to a buncha stupid crap being glued to it to deter shreddage) in downtown col's. this board rules and so does mark. cheers.