S/D: Thin White Rope?

there's a phrasing in that frontier records blast that is tantalizing me

'thin white rope's first five albums'

does that just mean 'the live album is the sixth album and we aren't reissuing that one?'

cause otherwise it implies there is... more

or maybe they're counting bottom feeders and red sun?

Thanks to MaresNest again x infinity !

xpost or Spoor, more sensibly

hmm

Thin White Rope - 1991-09-07- Aalborg.
Thin White Rope - 1989-07-03 Camden Town London (UK) aud.

https://we.tl/HbJU104Vqq

that camden one is referred to as legendary in the blog by the tour manager guy (i think)

IMPORTANT: I am listening to one of the '88 shows. I don't even know which one. The point is the extended coda of It's OK is peak humanity

Also... in the same show... the vocal performance on Some Velvet Morning... how is this possible

I'm just starting to dig into all of these myself, the Odense '91 gig is great, good weighty sound, some nice covers too, Silver Machine!

OMG now they are jamming the sickest possible jam over the peter gunn bassline (this song did not start as peter gunn)

<3 jon

i srsly love peoples continuing enthusiasm for the music of this crazy band

They are the only ones who combined all my favorite ingredients! They have intricate interlocking lead guitars, immense saurian heaviness, single-minded hypno drumming, and hilarious/heartbreak lyrics drawn from the natural sciences!

Really if they had hushed semi-ambient improvs and the occasional oboist I would need no other music.

This was the one I was listening to this afternoon btw:
1988-10-22 - Backnang, DE, JuZe (SBD) - flac, urschrei collection 009

HeartbreakING lyrics

That's the last of the recent ones, if you guys aren't fed up yet I can go back and cherry pick the better quality older torrents, let me know.

Thin White Rope 1990-06-02 Hanau Kulturbasar (aud)
Thin White Rope 1987-09-11 Siracusa FM
Thin White Rope - 1990-02-16 San Francisco

https://we.tl/AtHCjPHavc

I say keep em coming (perhaps selected according to decent sound quality) cause for me, some of the shows are a bit too shitty sounding for me to really dig, so the more good sounding ones the better!

Camden uploaded yesterday is indeed the one described in Compton’s blog and it slays. Sounds like track 12 at 2:20 is where Matt Abourezk passes out? Perhaps the two Guy solo songs prior to that are the band giving him a break.

I think there's another 3 that look like decent quality, the Hanau Kulturbasar '90 from the last upload is fantastic, nice long show, great sound.

are there Ruby Sea demos floating about?

Not that I've seen, just that one track, "Dinosaur' from the Hidden Lands boot.

That Camden gig, right at the end someone says 'sorry, but we're going to have to go and evaporate for a while...' :)

lolol i just heard that bit a half hour ago but couldn't quite make it out

Jon, which show would you recommend overall? I'd like to listen, but don't think I can go through them all.

Camden and Vienna of the ones I’ve been able to listen to so far. And both volumes of demos. Lots to hear still though

Sorry Backnang and Camden!

Thanks Jon!!

Thin White Rope 1990-06-02 Hanau Kulturbasar is a great, all-round later show too.

That ones next on deck for me!

there's also this 1992 ROIO (haven't heard or checked all the links yet) : http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=900

Thin White Rope - 1988-04-02 - Goez Beest, Amsterdam, NL - Sbd
Thin White Rope - 1988-09-29 - Vera, Groningen, Netherlands

Two remaining Dime seeds, the Amsterdam one is especially good. Vera is a different show from the one previously linked.

https://we.tl/3BWyMgZjXQ

1990 Hanau np for me. Great sound, on-it performance. Still in the first half

it makes me a bit sad that Guy never seems to have done that bellowing OHHH LORD YEAHHH live

A bit cash-strapped but gonna jump on these while white vinyl remains, feel like I'll regret it if I don't

(ok, that ROIO thing doesn't work 100% - sorry)

someone's weird fondness for relentless, crashing snare hits amidst relative calm nearly wrecks a bunch of songs throughout their career

― twerking for obvious reasons (contenderizer), Tuesday, July 9, 2013 11:52 PM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hoping someone will address this on the remasters but it's also sorta how the drums were played - part of the sound, I guess

These demos are great! Never really made the connection before (though maybe it's obvious given the region) but some of these early tunes sound like Savage Republic with Lemmy on vocals

definitely some shared dna with the SR guitarists, that death-surf snakecharming thing

Davis ain't the Mojave (say), but yeah, definitely California scene connections at work.

i tend to think licher, kyser, kunkel, verlaine all had their fair share of shadows and ventures LPs

I bet a great book could be written about this period (distinct from the punk scene covered in We've Got The Neutron Bomb, various books about X, etc), if it hasn't already. My southern California rock timeline / education is definitely a bit blurry. How much did bands like TWR intersect--socially or otherwise--with bands like Rain Parade, Green On Red, Bangles, etc?

I was trying to recall how I got into TWR, and I'm sure it was because I was chasing down Paisley Underground bands and I saw them - in the press - mistakenly lumped in with Rain Parade, Three O'Clock et al. But then, so were The Long Ryders and Green On Red.

I wonder if any of the desert rock/stoner bands of the very late 80's/90's dug these guys.

There was a great fanzine in the UK called Bucketful of Brains which provided an overview of those variously loosely connected scenes, they would write about The Plimsouls, Lyres, Rain Parade, Three O'Clock, Long Ryders, Baraccudas, REM, Fuzztones, TWR, Soft Boys that sort of thing.

The elephant in the room not named yet: Dream Syndicate.

with TV as the elephant's dad

this band is really good but man...the singer really tries my patience

Out

Haha! Oh man...

https://image.ibb.co/gWyfcx/acres_front.jpg https://image.ibb.co/kVTVcx/acres_back.jpg

^ This is how I first heard TWR, bought from a high street chain for £1.99 which in today's money is probably about two pounds. Zippo were a UK label that specialised in rootsy US rock, I think they started from a shop and then got bought out by Demon. Those sorts of bands were getting a bit of a push in the UK at the time, Green On Red would get on the cover of Melody Maker and Sounds but I don't think anyone really bought their records tbh. There's some good tracks on it (e.g. 'Pure Heart' by the Wild Seeds is a bit corny but gorgeous, and 'Thin Line Man' by Giant Sand was an early high-water mark for Mr Gelb and also kind of invented the Pixies imo), but honestly a lot of it is kind of meat'n''tatoes, riffy, strummy fare. 'Moonhead' really leapt out at me, majestic and mysterious and monstrous in equal measure. Was really getting into Television and the Meat Puppets' Up On The Sun at the time, and I felt it had more in common with that sort of thing than with the rest of the bands on the comp.

Was really getting into Television and the Meat Puppets' Up On The Sun at the time, and I felt it had more in common with that sort of thing

For sure.

Xposts I mean I get that if there’s one thing that might have militated against rampant thin white rope love all over the world, it’s Guy’s voice. Same thing with imo the other best band of that decade - there’s plenty of people who just can’t deal with MES vocals and I believe them.

But Guy’s voice is just so good, so perfect. I wouldn’t change a single node.

Also even with the distancing effect of the vox couldn’t they have at least been as popular as the fall? :(

Calling any underachieving band "underrated" is obviously an overused rock crit cliche (as is saying "'underrated' is an overused rock crit cliche") but if it ever applied to any band, it's this one. Really, the fact that they weren't even in the conversation after a certain point is mind boggling (see also: Lift To Experience)

Anyone with any insights as to why? Maybe it was personal? Drugs? Maybe they were dicks to everyone? None of those factors prevented scores of other bands (some even appearing on that comp) from getting recognition, at least for a little while (looking at you, Dan Stuart)

The record biz has always been cruel and unfair, huh?

Yeah idk

They put out a record a year which were all great and sometimes masterpieces, the records were readily obtainable, enough critics liked them, they toured like fuck and (I’m surmising from recorded evidence) played hard at every show, seems like they acted like clowns offstage while touring but not unusually so.

Am I right that they more or less stopped because of frustration + weariness with their sheer underratedness? It pains me. There could have been more of these songs.

It would have been interesting if they'd been able to persist for a couple of years more, with the weird Krautrock edges starting to resurface among newer bands at the time like Stereolab. But people will make their decisions.

am only semi serious here but they were never buddies with sonic youth unlike dinosaur jr or nirvana or mudhoney or whoever. mind you, the lunachicks were and it's been a long while since i heard them played in asda