Royal Trux : Classic or Dud ?

...or in Drag City's words, Do you remember the summer of '93? Our brief stay in Camelot.

i remember a glowing review in Rolling Stone

iirc that was SReynolds, who had already championed the previous couple/few records in the pages of Melody Maker.

I believe it was Jim Greer who had championed them (& pre-hype Pavement) much earlier in the mainstream press, the zines were all over the early Drag City catalog.

Cats & Dogs is a brilliant, brilliant record

"Alison Moyet, man." Graun interview worth it for that alone, but can't believe how bad the writing is at times, even resorting to the old "like x falling down a flight of stairs" cliche.

Sativa ftw

I'm on Team Neil, but he very well may "smoke too much weed" ;P

I've listened to White Stuff a good bit since Friday and it's steadily growing on me. Honestly just happy to hear those sloppily-intertwined voices together again on some new songs.

funny, when I interviewed Neil via email for a PSF article back in 2015, I asked him about the 1990 tour when they were running drum loops behind live guitar/vox (as seen in the 'What Is Royal Trux' concert footage posted above), and he brought up Yaz as a reference point. Guess it had a bigger impact than I had assumed.

I'm trying to listen to White Stuff again... the drumming is, like, really bad.

The Trux concept c. "VOD" era was not supposed to extend to literally sounding like amateurish hair metal

Podcast interview with Jennifer. She explains leaving Drag City and a bit of personal history:
http://vishkhanna.com/2019/03/06/ep-465-jennifer-herrema-of-royal-trux/

On first listen through this sounds fine to me; it's neither as good as Veterans of Disorder or Electric Brick Wall but it sits comfortably between the two, and I 100% have time for that kind of album

Amen

can't listen to that interview at work. what's the short version of her leaving drag city?

one thing notale about drag city is how much loyalty they seem to inspire. royal trux are exceptional in being long time or old time d.c. acts that have left the label not once but twice. cf. bill callahan and will oldham who have stuck with them for 25+ years despite surely getting lots of offers from bigger labels.

*notable

Listening to the podcast now; Jennifer suggests that Drag City operates in some kind of groupthink fashion that was dragging them down (transcription is mine):

Neil and I have, like, all sorts of ideas[...] We don't want to be held down, we don't want to be told no, and we don't want to be on a label that's a collective mind. When we want to do something, we can't wait for the label to determine if everyone else wants to roll that way. We're autonomous, and always have been[...] They're the label, and we're the artist. It's more of a 'project' than a seriously functioning record label at this point.

She goes on to say that when she finally overcame her skepticism around streaming, and wanted Trux's stuff out there, she was frustrated by the politics around how Drag City was approaching it at the time.

huh. honestly it's hard to imagine any label satisfying her desire to roll with whatever they want to do.

"they"

"our 2020 album will only be released on CD-ROM"

The specific incident she mentions is that she is/was pro-streaming and DC kept pushing back for months and then finally they acquiesced and let Royal Trux/RTX/Black Bananas be available on streaming sites and within a day or two the entire Drag City catalog started being available as well.

The way I heard/understood it, it was only after they had left the label, and their catalog was made available by Fat Possum, that all the DC stuff also came online (which was the "irony" of the situation).

Haha, I def like the accuracy of your take better than my 1/2 of one ear semi-listening take.

omg interviewer seriously just asked about "'white stuff' in terms of racism" I'm dying

Podcast interviews conducted via telephone are t-h-e W-O-R-S-T

I don't know what the story is with Drag City; but when you consider that even Neil "noted he was 'overjoyed' not to be working with the band’s previous label" (per one of the interviews linked above) -- something definitely went bad there.

is your ejaculate racist y/n?

I'm kinda glad I heard this after all the Neil/Jennifer drama and read some of the negative reviews, since it set my expectations to a point where I really kinda liked it. It's not great, but not the Black Bananas redux I kinda feared. I still don't like the Kool Keith track and a few others, but "Suburban Junky Lady", "Every Day Swan" and "Whopper Dave" give me what I like.

I agree, it's definitely a better album than what I / we had been led to believe

I think it's great fun. And it still feels like RT except for the Kool Keith track but I'm gonna guess that was Jennifer H's call so I'll give her that one weird outlier.

THE 1987 ROYAL TRUX PINK CASSETTE HAS BEEN FOUND AND RIPPED
http://tinyurl.com/rtx1987

Just making my rounds passing this out. If you know anyone who's interested in hearing this pass it along.

/\ cassette rip credit goes to Concentric Circles on instagram
https://www.instagram.com/concentric_circles_/

whoa

!

Oh weird, vocal on "Gold Dust" almost sounds like Daniel Johnston. Wonder if this has been uploaded at the right speed. Can't really tell Neil and Jennifer apart! Nice find.

Pretty sure it's ripped at the right speed. There was a 30 second clip released a year ago by another tape owner that sounds the same.

This is before Jennifer came into her rough vocal style. Just a kid at that point

https://scontent.flhr4-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/56462476_2039185006194155_3549618383689351168_n.jpg

dammit
https://scontent.flhr4-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/56462476_2039185006194155_3549618383689351168_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr4-1.fna&oh=71e618db22d8a3cb0c7ed45948032438&oe=5D3C871A

Priceless!

Thanks for sharing the link to this demo; very cool.

"Cut You Loose" and "Luminous Dolphin" sound like the same versions on Singles, Live, Unreleased -- yes?

yes, and it seems like Bare Bones & Andersonville are the same as on the first LP.

Just got to those (and agree).

This tape is really good... fills in the gaps without shattering any of the "mystique" (...we have White Stuff for that).

https://66.media.tumblr.com/3b75adfc25afacf8504374849a6cec6c/tumblr_pqqe78MU7T1rkya77o1_540.png

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sounds like the NYC show has been canceled too

Looks like the whole tour has been axed.

Ugh. Shouldn't be terribly surprised, but...

Definitely not surprised. Purchased the tix figuring that this would be the most likely conclusion TBH.

Still love that record tho.

hey they should have announced the tour was cancelled last june sorry they lied

— Neil Hagerty (@TheHowlingHex) April 29, 2019