Favourite SST Release of... 1986

Though it has sparked a buried memory of Gone playing a horrible set on U68 long ago. Thought I'd managed to eliminate that one... (I'm like 95% sure it was on U68, but it's been a while.)

xpost irritating how?

I considered the Divine Horsemen, but "Time Stands Still" is the the good one and it was on Enigma in '84.

fun fact - Julie Christensen of Divine Horsemen backup vocals also backed Leonard Cohen on his great late '80s stuff.

Voted Bad Brains because of "Return to Heaven"

I only brought up MDC to say Husker Du were considered hardcore bedrock as late as '84--no judgment of MDC's quality (or cathartic value) one way or the other. But on a totally separate topic, MDC were hot live as late as '88, and "Chicken Squawk" had a huge impact on me.

so pumped for meat puppets tonight :)

They will play everything way too fast and sloppy and you will have lots of fun. Curt will possibly be wearing sweat pants.

as far as loud noisy stuff goes, for me, i got excited again by death metal and grindcore.

yeah, death metal was good for a while. around '90 I was listening mostly to geto boys, monster magnet, morbid angel, cop shoot cop.

I never got excited by death metal or grindcore

really, I was all WOOO HOOOO death metal

same here, hearing Napalm Death - SCUM was like coming home again. all the fury and speed of hardcore pushed to infinity

I was all, "Didn't Die Kreuzen and Void and Prong and Beyond Posession do that stuff years ago? What's the big deal?" (Not saying I was right, necessarily, but it's not like I ever got into grindcore etc. later, either.)

all that early Earache stuff sounded way fresh to me and it was totally ridiculous. shit like Sore Throat, Spazztic Blurr, Old Lady Drivers. then you had your Carcass and Terrorizer and Morbid Angel. damn, now I have to hunt down my Grindcrusher cd...

in 86 I started borrowing metal tapes from the burnouts in class, at first for a goof then was pummeled. 'Reign In Blood' or SOD or Celtic Frost.

voted EVOL btw cuz it's so great and there's a record even better than Sister in 87

Didn't Die Kreuzen and Void and Prong and Beyond Posession do that stuff years ago?

gonna assume you meant voivod here

and yeah, as good as they were, those guys never reached the same brainscrambling hatefueled miasmas that a morbid angel or a deicide did

iow they were an important evolutionary step but not the ultimate goal

is this still the SST thread lol

xp Them too. But to me, Voivod were so heads and tails above everybody else that the only bands who reminded me of them back then were ones who seemed somehow beyond metal -- like, say, Treponem Pal. And Young Gods. And Bloodstar. Who I actually loved around '90. (Probably should've been checking out Anacrusis too, but they never came up.)

I wonder if yr stubborn rationalism kept you from fully enjoying stuff like deicide or morbid angel? die kreuzen/prong/voivod are all notably secular when it comes to imagery/lyrics. just hypothesizin here...

I mean you gotta be a special something to hear "GHOULS ATTACK THE CHURCH" and be like WOOO HOOOO me for some of that

an important evolutionary step but not the ultimate goal

Yeah, but by the late '80s I was really getting bored with the whole schtick of "Let's take this extreme ugly stuff and make it EVEN MORE UGLY AND EXTREME!!" Wasn't surprising anymore, just predictable. To me.

I don't know if anybody ever called me a "stubborn rationalist" before. I kind of like that, but I was totally raised Catholic, so I'm not sure it applies. It's not like I ever listened to Die Kreuzen's words much!

Though then again it's not like I watch horror movies much either. (More likely it's just that I was already hitting my 30s, and too old for the stuff.)

never too old for ghouls attacking the church imo

Yeah, but by the late '80s I was really getting bored with the whole schtick of "Let's take this extreme ugly stuff and make it EVEN MORE UGLY AND EXTREME!!" Wasn't surprising anymore, just predictable. To me.

OTM, it felt like a diminishing returns kind of thing for sure. That's what made Soul Discharge stand out like a traffic cone for me-- Boredoms took all those elements further yet made it seem like a new kind of beauty rooted in play.

I actually gave Soul Discharge a good review in the Voice when it came out (and reviwed some of their pre-album 7-inches for a singles column in Creem), so yeah, the Boredoms were something. But they still hit me as something that the Butthole Surfers had been doing better a half decade before. Guess I was just jaded. (Duh.)

interesting to see that i wasnt the only one who transitions pretty much straight out of this into foetus/cop shoot cop/industriostompy stuff (retrospectively at least). also its always weird for me to place this timelinewise right up against master of puppets - chronology doesnt seem to match up with memory for some reason.

has to be I Against I

never too old for ghouls attacking the church imo

words to live by!

i'm not gonna vote for it, but i have a major soft spot for Ragin' Full On

That is my #2 choice

Yeah I am not voting until I have my first listen in 20 years to Ragin'.

1986: the year SST broke? No more Husker Du Black Flag or Minutemen, replaced largely by further opening the floodgates of crud, flipping the ratio of great/good/awful new releases. I bought records by Gone, Lawndale, and October Faction in 86, each time thinking, there has to be something I'll like on this, it's on SST! (Ultimate indignity: bought October Factionalization TWICE, because the tape got chewed so I needed the LP to find out for sure that I wasn't feeling it.) If Thurston hadn't been himself so enamored of SST's glory days, I might have figured it out a bit sooner, but really I have no one but myself to blame.

Still remember right after their flat out amazing set at Metro summer 86, Meat Puppets pushing their way through the crowd desperate to get in front of people before they all left the club so they could maybe sell a few shirts & Curt explained T-shirt sales were the only way they made any money from the band, they saw nothing when records sold. Such a shame - best band in the world at that point in my opinion - they should have been government subsidized. So I was all set to vote Out My Way over EVOL until I saw the actual list. But Das Damen is an option (again, thanks to Thurston) and it changed my life way more than all the others here combined so it's gotta be that.

How the first Das Damen changed my life: I saw them play that summer, blown away, bought the record (before the SST re-release later that year) from the drummer. Then I happened to mention all that 16 years later, the next time I saw him when, small world, he was interviewing me for a part-time position & that little mention kind of sealed the deal. So I got to spend a couple days a week that year working with Lyle, who is undeniably and indescribably great. This vote is for him.

xpost dudes Ragin' all across the land today

i think i've heard, like, five of these albums. and they are the five i bought when they came out. i wasn't made of money in 1986.

I've heard 16, but that's from pooled resources of high school buds, and college radio/zine promos

Cool story, Dad A!

I bought 14 of these, and 5 of those are possibly in my top 100 worst records I've ever bought. Still pretty glad I basically bought anything that I saw that I didn't know on SST back then though, or else I probably would never have heard Slovenly.

You know what, Negativland Escape From Noise is gonna be an interesting factor in the next poll as far as 'awesome records you always forget were on SST'.

I bought 14 of these, and 5 of those are possibly in my top 100 worst records I've ever bought. Still pretty glad I basically bought anything that I saw that I didn't know on SST back then though, or else I probably would never have heard Slovenly.

Bought 14 too! Heard another 5 or so, but the real dogs somehow always got purchased. I must have felt the same as you back then & so I kept buying, but one Slovenly sure had an awful lot of Painted Willie to make up for.

Happy Nightmare Baby is one of those for me xp

my top 100 worst records I've ever bought

Would love to see this list!

There's gotta be a thread geared toward such a thing already, right?

I think I might break my brain if I ever tried to make that list.

These Immortal Souls' Get Lost (Don't Lie!) also possibly another one of those 'that was on SST?' records.

There's gotta be a thread geared toward such a thing already, right?

Sounds like a good idea to me. Though I'd probably shorten it to 10 rather than 100.

Some of that Henry Kaiser stuff also fits the 'SST?!?!' category

Btw, I'm surprised to see people repping for fIREHOSE so much on this thread. I thought that record was really really bland and disappointing at the time, especially compared to the Minutemen (wrote a Creem review of it along with Ballot Result saying so, and making dumb Styx and Kansas and Synchonicity jokes). But I haven't heard it since, so maybe I was wrong. (Definitely underrated Kansas back then.)

Some of that Henry Kaiser stuff also fits the 'SST?!?!' category

Crazy Backwards Alphabet!

With the matt groening cover!

Btw, I'm surprised to see people repping for fIREHOSE so much on this thread. I thought that record was really really bland and disappointing at the time, especially compared to the Minutemen (wrote a Creem review of it along with Ballot Result saying so, and making dumb Styx and Kansas and Synchonicity jokes). But I haven't heard it since, so maybe I was wrong. (Definitely underrated Kansas back then.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, April 8, 2010 1:20 PM (9 minutes ago)

^^^this^^^

between ciccone youth/lucky sperms/fIREHOSE, shit I'll even throw in three way tie for last as a collective stinkbomb after all-leading-up-to-and-including double nickels.

You know what, Negativland Escape From Noise is gonna be an interesting factor in the next poll as far as 'awesome records you always forget were on SST'.

This is exactly why I was dreading the 1987 version of this because how can I NOT vote for the Negs even with all the other great stuff that's gonna be on the list in 87...?

I dunno man, the first firehose album just has this naive charm, I mean i totes agree it does not nearly come within shouting distance of Dbl Nkls.

I really like that first fIREHOSE album and all, but mostly it makes me wonder what they would have been doing if D Boon wasn't gone.

Also, Voivod would have been a great fit on SST, I think. Weren't they on some label in Canada that licensed SST releases, or am I thinking of someone else?

For me Firehose was the classic example of taking what you're given because it's as good as you're gonna get. Sure it's not the best band you ever imagined, it's not your platonic ideal of punk rock, it's not leaping headfirst into uncharted territory. It's not teaching you a new language as it's created. Because it's not the Minutemen. But it's Watt and Hurley, still psychically symbiotically linked and completely on fire, still the greatest rock rhythm section ever, continuing to exist, soldiering on. Of course comparing the two bands is both unfair and unavoidable. It's not exalted without Boon but it's still great in many ways. Ed kept the fires burning.

I never got to see the Minutemen live. But I saw Firehose doing Minutemen covers & their own songs, and it hit the spot.