Favourite SST Release of... 1986

Uh is there a Vitus album on this poll?

CUZ IF NOT WHY AM I IN THIS THREAD

have you got a crystal ball? vitus is the next poll!
xp

i had to go double then triple check I hadn't missed a vitus album (im using wikipedia)

Oh wow, I just looked up that Always August album and realized I see a copy of that about once a week.

xp: yeah, i didn't think there was an applicable Vitus album, but people kept mentioning them and I thought there was secret invisible text.

will Minutemen fans auto-vote for fIREHOSE?

xp haha me too obviously.

Oops, missed this one on my top 125 albums list:

123. (various) - lovedolls superstar

hadn't missed a vitus album (im using wikipedia)

Well, in that case, Wiki (which calls Born Too Late 1986 on the Saint Vitus discography page) is contradicting itself.

Do you have any more?

More lists? Well, there are a couple other threads with similar titles for different years, if that's what you mean. Anyway, glad you like it.

lol whoops i thought Vitus there for a second..I guess I meant SY wins this poll & the next, and I'm calling Bad Brains to runner-up here, and SV to runner-up the next

Alter-Natives -- Hold Your Tongue

This one didn't sound remotely familiar, but I just did a Google image search, and can confirm that I have actually seen that LP cover before.

So what I wanna know is, who would win a Das Damen vs. Painted Willie poll? (They both basically predated "grunge" by turning '70s sludge rock shitty, right? But Green River were already doing it better in Seattle by then.)

Aside from fIREHOSE and (obviously) Evol (and Zoogz Rift, which I just downloaded), which of these should I check out soonest?

Bad Brains

the black flag album is one of their better live albums too

woah, i had totally forgotten about Lawndale. Gone had their moments too.
Desperate Teenage Lovedolls is tempting - but gotta go w/ I Against I.

I Against I is amazing, but yeah EVOL.

Another vote cast for Slovenly here.

arrrggghhh whos got the 10 1/2 vs i against i

I JUST DONT KNOW

chuck, what am i missing when i listen to Gone? never loved em...

some great albums on this poll:
040 Das Damen Das Damen [will probably vote triskaidecaphobe when it arises]
048 Saccharine Trust We Became Snakes
049 Meat Puppets Out My Way
059 Sonic Youth EVOL
060 Black Flag Who's Got the 10½?
062 Various Artists Lovedolls Superstar [is this the one with sonic yoof covering 'hallowed be thy name'?
065 Bad Brains I Against I

really between EVOL and 10 1//2 and I Against I for me. probably plump for EVOL in the end, though Sister is better.

EVOL! but I might vote Starpower - such a concentrated hit of SY. must've played it 1000 times in 86. at the time I also loved Kill Tunes by Leaving Trains, can't remember why.

Because it's good, maybe? It is!

It is!

Still voted EVOL tho

yeah I thought so too but now I can't remember at all what it sounds like - sloppy country-punk? gonna try streaming some of it soon & see

Actually 1986 is less of a fistfight for me than I was expecting - EVOL obv a great choice but going Bad Brains this time out.

- Lawndale, because in 86 HC had already turned into something kind of limp.
- Bad Brains count only for their first 12" (the album cover speaks truth).
- mentioning Zoogz is not fair - he's always out of competition on *any* list (in a positive way)

Apex of their celeb/LA/trash aesthetic, most successful attempt at conjuring mood over an album, actual idea of how to use Kim Gordon's vocals best - EVOL it is, not for this poll, but as SY's best.

chuck, what am i missing when i listen to Gone?

Well, if you would've asked me in 1986, I would have insisted that they were some exicting and funky new kind of harmelodic jazz-metal, an instrumental missing link between "Supernaut" and On The Corner or something. I was probably full of shit though. But since I haven't owned the album in forever, I can't say for sure one way or the other.

And yeah, Leaving Trains were kinda rootsy/vaguely Stonesy falling-apart punk, led by sometime music critic and Courtney Love husband Falling James Moreland. Don't think I ever listened to their '86 SST, but I've still got 2001's Emotional Legs around here somewhere.

"A WARNING FROM THE PROGRAMMER: EXTREME CAUTION is mandatory with all use of this psychic program material, for while - with proper use - this program information will tune the listener to sufficient destructive capability to get any job - no matter how dirty - done. If mishandled, this psychic fuel program (Program: Annihilator) may overload the Subject's receptive capacity, which could result in indiscriminate violence of an intensity the Programmer can only assume the Subject will consider undisirable. THE PROGRAMMER THEREFORE HEREBY DISCLAIMS ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACTIONS OF THOSE WHO WILLINGLY MAKE THE DECISION TO AVAIL THEMSELVES OF Program: Annihilator."

075 Alter-Natives Hold Your Tongue

I really liked this one at the time - skronky, possibly be-bopish, instrumental jazz-core. Not as great as Tar Babies or Universal Congress Of though.

I actually liked a Tar Babies EP in 1986 -- Respect Your Nightmares, on Bone Air Records, presumably a Wisconsin label. But iirc I thought their later SST stuff wasn't as good. (And yesterday I just realized that I've got a 45 by a different band called the Tar Babies that I used to think was the Wisconsin guys -- "Rejected At The High School Dance" on Bona Fide, feat. Greg Prevost of the Chesterfield Kings. Single was recorded in the '70s but didn't come out until '89.)

evol is top 10 alltime for me but I'm throwing my vote at the awesome + underrated we became snakes. if you told me jazz punk was a viable option in '86 I'd have told you get f'kd. that is, until I heard this album. "frankie on a pony" is an execrable lowpoint but every other song on it brings the goods. it's one of the last quintessential SST releases in that it contains all the elements that made the label's classic period great; genreless, postpunk/HC music captured in a flat, just-the-facts production with some incredible playing and a taste for boho freedom.

will prolly vote blind idiot god in the next poll, just because

SST polls are getting over 100 votes, Evol will walk this poll, will Evol be the 1st album in an ILM poll to get 100+ votes?

After EVOL I found Sister and Daydream to be bitter disappointments, total cop-outs by this band who seemed to promise such a fascinating balance on EVOL. I've softened on that a little since then, but still rate EVOL two shelves higher than any other SY I know.

However, I'm feeling an unexpected surge of affection for the 1st firehose. I listened to that thing 8 million times that year; the mere fact that it happened was so WTF and cheering.

And Bad Brains deserves votes just for the riff on 'Reignition'.

I love Respect Your Nightmares (put out by Paradise Records, the Madison punk store) but Fried Milk is better. I'm with you on Tar Babies' subsequent SST albums.

1986 sucks. I'm curious about all these albums now, but outside of Sonic Youth (or Beat Happening, as I later found out) it seemed like punk rock really hit a wall, and was so much less interesting than Run-DMC, Blue Velvet, Prince, the Smiths, etc. It wasn't until Fugazi that I started caring again. That said, I still own Out My Way and I Against I and Ragin', Full On. I wanted to believe.

No no no and no. 1986 was just when the other labels started taking over from SST. Big Black, Buttholes, Thin White Rope, Naked Raygun...

What year did Neurotica come out? That and Pussy Galore and discovering the 80's Rhino single-disc Nuggets records kinda killed off hardcore for me at that point.

xpost my impression was always that Thin White Rope was an interesting second-wave Paisley Underground band...are they in fact a key band in the 80s American Underground (along the lines of Dinosaur Jr., Buttholes, Huskers, the Pupps, Vitus, Green River, etc.)?

I consider them so, absolutely. They were far too heavy and foreboding to fit the paisley thing. Check out Moonhead and Sack Full Of Silver, or, more to the point, the live swan song The One That Got Away.

Neurotica was '87, and by then Buttholes, Big Black, and Naked Raygun were all past their primes. (Give or take maybe Big Black in fact, they all peaked before '86.) Never cared about Thin White Rope or knew anybody who did. I was still finding lots of punk-identified stuff to like in '86, as that best albums lists demonstrates, but "hardcore" had been a dead issue since Flipper in '82, and by late '87 I was getting bored with the whole schtick and opting for Debbie Gibson and Poison singles. Thought Prince's '86 album was mediocre, still do; didn't care much about the Smiths {or Blue Velvet (?)}, still don't. But in early '87 I was still liking plenty on SST -- wrote a looooong roundup of the label for the Voice that year: favorites were Dinosaur, Screaming Trees, and Blind Idiot God. Favorite punk album of '87 overall was Feedtime. But yeah, the shit was getting old.

xpost The live cover of Yoo Doo Right on the lastmentioned will clear up any uncertainties as to where TWR fit or don't fit.

xhuxk you have now met someone who cares abt them! There's a small cult of us.

it helped if you were a metal fan as well as a punk/hardcore/noiserock fan. in 1986. many people were either/or.

Yeah, by '86, Metallica and Voivod and Celtic Frost etc. were all making records at least as interesting as the Buttholes or Naked Raygun. So that was definitely another direction I was going.

Most of the punk rockers I knew were immediately hip to those three bands.

i was also a smiths fan, so i was good to go.

the beginning of the end might have been when you found yourself buying caterwaul or gut bank or eleventh dream day or sister double happiness tapes hoping they would give you the brain rush of yore. wasn't gonna happen. and then you are like oh my god what have i done with my life i own more than one fetchin bones album.

and then your best friend says hey wanna go see voice of the beehive and that petrol emotion at the club and then the 80's were over and they didn't end well.

Sister Double Happiness, ew

i wz just about to ask about them...Scott Miller reps for Freight Train...

I was wondering about them too, on Rolling Hard Rock last year:

one older guy (more from the '80s or '90s) I'm just now realizing is a pretty soulful, emotive, powerful vocalist is Gary Floyd -- who I guess was in the Dicks and Sister Double Happiness, neither of whom I ever paid much attention to at the time (so: recommendations?), but I've just now been listening to him cover sundry Spirit, Steppenwolf, Leon Russell, Clarence Carter, and Curtis Mayfield classics on this 2003 CD called Mad Dogs & San Franciscans by the weirdo avant/jam/fusion/whatever band Mushroom (who I often like otherwise too btw), and he belts great. So now I wonder whether he was ever anywhere near that good with original songs.

― xhuxk, Friday, 20 November 2009 16:28 (4 months ago)

Wondering what came out on Homestead in '86...

Wait is that the dude who the Buttholes song was named after?

also LOLOLOLOL Fetchin' Bones

otm

back to SST...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE8d6yUpDG0&feature=related

Ah, just discovered who the guy who reviewed Excelsior in Spin back in '86 was (he called it, like, the best album ever)...Don Howland of Great Plains, Gibson Brothers, etc. Thanks Don!

Oh, sorry SST. Back to voting for Zoogz...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5XRdBDA-w

I remember that review! Ha Great Plains-- THEIR album got stellar reviews from OPtion, in turn.

Wait who are you, dlp9001?

thank you ILM, for making me get out In Excelsior Dayglo on this rainy day. Tommy The Truck!

Who will j0hn punch this poll?

Is there a connection between Zoogz Rift & Bob Mould both being involved in pro wrestling? Or is did two SST weirdos just naturally gravitate to the WWF separately?

I think it was separate. I don't know about Zoogz, but Mould was an AWA fan in the '80s (he's wearing a Rage in the Cage long-sleeve on the cover of the Eight Miles High/Makes No Sense At All EP). Then in the very late '90s he joined WCW as a writer during that company's worst ever creative period. If you think wrestling's ridiculous enough already...

j0hn won't punch any of you unless and until he can punch all of you

a punch fap

Minnesota loved its AWA Wrestling, Bob was no different

Like all red blooded Minnesotans, Mould wanted Bobby 'The Brain' Heenan to die in a fire.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

UnAutomatic thread bump

It's weird, being a Brit I never think of Sonic Youth as being an SST band as they were on Blast First over here. Same way I never think of Big Black or the Butthole Surfers as being Touch & Go bands.

Albums on this list I once owned : 22 (approx, can't really remember which exact Zoogz Rift albums I bought)
Albums on this list I still own : 1 (fIREHOSE, who get the vote by default)

sonic youth are one of my favorite bands and were hugely important to me at the time, but i'm still gonna pick i against i over evol

evol's fascinating, but it tends to bum me out and/or irritate me more often than not. and while i Against i is far from perfect, I'm basically always in the mood for it. up there with sister, damaged, happy nightmare baby, born too late, you're living all over me, meat pups II, new day rising and double nickels in my list of things for which I owe SST (& Ginn/Dukowski) an eternal debt.

I'm really hoping EVOL gets 100+ votes...

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it did, although a lot of people have said they're voting Bad Brains (maybe because they know everyone else will vote Evol). I cant wait to see the results to see how close it is.

I would be surprised if EVOL gets over 50.

KIRA'S GOT THE 10.5

don't know most of these. went with EVOL

i get the feeling that sums this poll up

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

no 100 vote winner

High placement for '10 1/2' probly the surprise of this thread for me.

Five votes for Slovenly! For anyone who hasn't heard it, and I'm sure there's a lot, it's really worth your time if you can find it.

And don't let all those zero votes fool you, there's some prime wheat among that chaff.

What do you recommend?

The Gone records get a bad rap around here but Ginn's done much worse. Angst's Mending Wall is the best of theirs I've heard; it's not as folky as their other stuff to my ears. The Alter-Natives' Hold Your Tongue is good hyperactive jazz rock. And The Divine Horsemen are also worth a listen, but Chris D's first/main band The Flesh Eaters were better.

080 Sonic Youth Starpower 4

ok 4 jokers love the single that is 2/3rds songs on the album (3/3rds if you count the reissue) more than the album? fuck outta here.

maybe they only like the 1 track?

Favourite SST Release of... 1987

4 jokers love the single that is 2/3rds songs on the album (3/3rds if you count the reissue) more than the album? fuck outta here.

sometimes less is more

Evol is the best SY album though

^thank you

no worries