Favourite SST Release of... 1985

You'll be dissing Always August next, yer dirty rotter.

I used to love Always August! Tar Babies too, we`ll be getting to them soon.

3-Way Tie (For Last)

Here's what I wrote about it back in the day

Voted 3-Way Tie -- of all these, it's the one I go back and listen to most, though it's probably not the best of the list.

sucks that Britishers are forgetting to include sub-labels

Well, New Alliance didn't become a sub-label of SST till 1987, Cruz didn't start till '88, and Issues only issued four records!

― wronger than 100 geir posts (MacDara),

haha

I got a 2008 sampler w/a recent SST order, it's got JAMBANG, Greg Ginn & The Taylor Texas Corrugators, MOJACK, and Gone. Should I bother putting it in the CD player y/n?

I kind of think YES, cos I think we need a definitive answer on the Jambang vs Mojack question.

Ugh... Mojack, I guess. I literally just went through the whole CD in about three minutes. Mojack is sort of like Jambang with louder guitars and saxophone. Jambang is sort of like Kaleidoscope Funk Network. Oh god, this CD is so horrible.

Gone is the best band on this CD. Let that soak in: GONE is the best band on an SST sampler.

crazy how ginn's backing band for gone went on to become the rollins band...

Who is it nowadays? Sounds like Greg Ginn and an enthusastic drum machine. Apparently the album this song is taken from ("The Epic Trilogy") features a second disc with HR singing on it. The mind reels.

043 Various Artists The Blasting Concept Vol. II

This was maybe the first SST I ever bought and the Minutemen's 'Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love' slamming straight into the Huskers 'Erase Today' is a totally fucking knockout combination.

same with me! those were the two songs on it that i really liked. was this really cheap or something, cos thats the only reason i can think a 15 year old me bought this. the Black Flag song ("I Can See You") put me off them for about 5 years or something.

Yeah the Meat Pups song on there was really bad too! Think it was £3.99 from Our Price in Basingstoke.

Kudos to Gott Punch on Jambang endeavours.

It was a budget-priced sampler but I bought it second hand anyway iirc

Ginn is like the of Sam Phillips of punk. This electronics geek who curated this brilliant explosion in music, immensely radical in a way, but ends up a dottering good ol' boy.

voted My First Bells as the only one I wore the fuck out back in the day

gotta give SST props for realizing the one truly punk move left in 1985 is to become hippies.

painted willie votes give you an auto 51 correct?

It's true that October Faction sucked, but the album cover was super awesome!

Angst were kind of like a more earnest Violent Femmes iirc.

3 Way Tie has always been a heartbreaking disappointment to me.

Loose Nut and In My Head the beginning of the sweet-riffs-but-dead-soul Black Flag era.

My First Bells is the fucking elephant in the room, good christ it's EVERYTHING BEFORE DBL NCKLS ON 1 CASSETTE ppl! So unfair that I don't think I can conscientiously even vote for it.

Bloody battle between New Day Rising and Up On The Sun for me, and once again I don't think I can resolve it.

my first bells was a comp of all the new alliance stuff (less Georgeless?).

uh, new alliance was acquired by SST (early 1986 iirc) after D.Boon died as Watt thought that would be the best way to keep the releases in print.

the point is that most of us (not all, but most... esp britishers) bought new alliance releases (esp minutemen, descendents) when they were rereleased on SST and probably had no idea that they ever were origianlly released on new alliance until much later into music nerddom.

Did not know that! So... Nickels was the first one to be released on SST...?

Nope, My First Bells was everything they put out on both SST and New Alliance from 1980 to 1983, plus some tracks on comps put out by other labels (Maybe a Posh Boy one? I dunno).

I think the Minutemen and Descendents stuff on New Alliance was the only stuff to get re-released on SST. Maybe Husker Du too (was Land Speed Record on New Alliance? Jello put it out on AT's UK imprint I read once).

New Day Rising is an easy, if boring, pick for me here - never felt Flip Your Wig quite as much and if anything else here was a contender for me, it'd probably be Up on the Sun which I got into much much later.

The next couple years of SST are gonna be harder for me I think, and it's not out of any major love for Zoogz Rift. 1987 is going to be almost impossible to feel good about.

I'm busy going through therapy to deal with the inevitable disappointment when Zoogz gets robbed in the upcoming polls...

#31 and #39 were the soundtracks to my best summer ever. "Swimming Ground" was prophetic. We actually found our very own swimming ground that summer.

Amongst the first releases on New Alliance were Hüsker Dü's first album Land Speed Record and the Minutemen's second-ever release, the seven-inch EP Joy. Eventually the label grew to nurture the early career of the Descendents, issue various-artist compilation albums (such as Mighty Feeble), and release other recordings by The Minutemen (The Politics Of Time) and Hüsker Dü (the In A Free Land EP). The label showcased a number of post-punk bands from the South Bay area of southern California, notably Slovenly, Phantom Opera, and Invisiblechains.

After D. Boon's car-accident death in 1985 and the increasingly busier schedule of Watt's post-Minutemen band fIREHOSE, Watt and Tamburovich sold New Alliance to SST in 1987. Greg Ginn, SST's owner and Black Flag's guitarist, proceeded to transfer all of The Minutemen and Descendents back catalog and Hüsker Dü's Land Speed Record to SST and turned New Alliance into a subsidiary label of SST that concentrated on more adventurous and non-mainstream records, including jazz, instrumental, poetry, and spoken-word releases.

xxp

IIRC Politics Of Time was the only rilly important thing left off My First Bells.

Ah, the Mersh era, in which production actually does become the enemy of the music--post-Damaged Black Flag really only got it right with Slip It In, imho, though there are great songs on both Loose Nut and esp. In My Head. But too much vocal echo! And what's with the drum sound on 3-Way Tie? It's over at this thread where Tom Troccoli 'splained some of that drama:

Taking Sides: Keith Morris vs. Ron "Chavo Pederast" Reyes vs. Dez Cadena vs. Henry Rollins -- BLACK FLAG VOCALIST SMACKDOWN!

Flip Your Wig has "Games" and other greatness, but feels antiseptic. Which leaves New Day Rising (my vote), Project: Mersh (whose cover art, "King of the Hill," and "Take Our Test" I probably love more than all of New Day Rising, but an EP with filler is a bad sign), and Up on the Sun (whose "Maiden's Milk" I played at our wedding dinner). I never liked "Makes No Sense at All," but "Love Is All Around" is the immortal b-side. And I should say, I do love a lot of 3-Way Tie, "The Big Stick," "Courage," "What Is It?"

What else on this list is great? I was still buying records with allowance money at this point.

x-post: To clear up any confusion, I think these polls list the original SST catalog/release numbers, so Minutemen's first EP (Paranoid Time, SST 002, which is included) was the second SST release, and their second EP (Joy, originally released on New Alliance) won't be included until the '87 poll, where it appeared on "Post-Mersh, Vol. 3." The Punch Line was the first SST LP. I was under the impression Minutemen set up New Alliance to release Husker Du's Land Speed Record--which SST also eventually reissued (along with all the Minutemen stuff)--but I'm looking at my New Alliance-issued original copy and its catalog number is NAR-007, so there were six other records. And now Wikipedia has cleared up my mistake:

http://www.discogs.com/label/New+Alliance+Records

Re: Tar Babies, it won't beat Sister but I might vote for Fried Milk in '87, one of the great "lost" SST albums.

I fkin LOVE Fried Milk!

'I heard you're mad you're mad about the dogs/they stole your mama/in the middle of the night!'

Did that never come out on CD?

Not that I ever saw, actually.

Actually, I don't have the vinyl anymore and now am filled with regret.

Tar Babies were really, really fun live.

Agree about Fried Milk, the one right after it was pretty good too, but a lot more straight forward at being funky iirc. Only saw Tar Babies live once, on an SST double-header with Das Damen.

Where does Cruz fit into the whole SST family tree?

On the basis of the Colonel's description, it's kinda tempting to vote for that "7 Inch Wonders" collection. Which is a pretty weird thing to do, voting for something you've never owned or even heard in its entirety, but that's one of the quirky side effects of including compilations in a poll. And even though voting for a comp feels kinda like cheating, My First Bells is probably my favourite cassette of all time, so I can't overlook that.

I'll have to wait for the '86 poll to risk the wrath of J0hn D. by voting for The Second Factionalization, hahaha. (j/k)

86 is prob gonna be Mirage for me.

ANy takers for Minuteflag?

xxxpost

Cruz was basically the pop punk/grunge label, was it not? Stuff that didn't really fit with SST's avant rock jazz chin-stroky whatever direction at the time. Also, Ginn's solo albums came out on Cruz -- I've never heard any of those, are they much cop?

I've still never HEARD minuteflag! I like that George plays 'bean can' on that one...

...that's probably the best thing you can say about it IMO.

Never heard any solo Ginn, obviously SST was too small to contain his full genius?

an EP with filler is a bad sign

see also: guided by voices

pop fan that i am, it took me forever to "get" double nickels whereas project: mersh and 3-way tieimmediately clobbered me over the head with their catchiness, their smarts, their strange ambition, their greatness. both perfect records in my book. i count double nickels as pretty much perfect, too, but that took a lot longer for me and it's a different year anyway.

new day rising has so many jaw-dropping songs on it, but it's never been my favorite husker du album the way the two 1985 minutemen releases are my favorite minutemen records. which probably makes me minutemenly incorrect. but whatever.

still deciding which one of em gets my vote. leaning toward mersh since i have a strong feeling that's all it's gonna get.

(also, i realize mersh ends with 5 minutes of "filler" but i kinda love it.)

(also also, i love how watt corrects/updates the line "i dreamed i was e. bloom but i woke up joe bouchard" in the printed lyrics.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUJ8dcLxFVg

otm - Mersh and 3-Way were far from disappointing but More Minutemen! esp. after D's death

two thoughts on that video.

d. boon rolls himself down that hill for quite some time. impressive!

the silhouette-like shot at the end makes it fairly clear that george hurley was actually sideshow bob.

def new day rising

d. boon rolls himself down that hill for quite some time. impressive!

Especially when you're stuffed full of shite off the barbecue.

um people

My First Bells is the fucking elephant in the room, good christ it's EVERYTHING BEFORE DBL NCKLS ON 1 CASSETTE ppl! So unfair that I don't think I can conscientiously even vote for it.

I CAN AND WILL

1. Flip Your Wig, 2. "Makes No Sense at All," 3. New Day Rising. Then all those other bands.

if that's your prediction, then I'm sure it's gonna be way off :)

Meat Puppets got stuck with Lightning Strikes at Klub Foot and what appear to be a couple of little known indie bands. Hard Rain and Kingfisher Catch Fire,
IU think Lightning Strikes were an identikit punk band verging on metal.

Marquee wound up with them getting a generic metal band called something like Headmistress.

I'll probably find out taht all of thsoe bands were stepping stones for further longterm musical careers or not as the case may be.

Tear gas thing was indeed crazy, all of audience had to be filed out of the venue. Apparently McGee chased teh girl who let off the cannister halfway across the neighborhood. Then he lost her. I know I heard more of the story than I was aware of at the time later on. But not sure f that was a public source or something said to me.
Primal Scream were just going into a Detroit hard rock thing that I don't think suited them taht brilliantly. I don't think Gillespie has a very strong voice though I do enjoy what they were doing with sound a decade later, but that could be the players and sound manipulation as much. I think he may know a lot about music but not one of my favourite frontmen.
I think guitarist at the time left shortly after and formed Spirea X.

i hope that mcgee was chasing the girl to offer her a contract, cos that is way more rock'n'roll than some of the shite he put out on creation

Spot must have really pissed off Husker Du during the making of New Day Rising

I remember talk about Flaming Lips playing in Camden around the time of the Meat puppets debut at that debut. Not sure if that was a debut and not sure if they made it back to London for a long while after. I missed the gig and think I only just saw them for the first time last year.

Marquee wound up with them getting a generic metal band called something like Headmistress.

Getting a little off-topic here but the Meat Puppets support at the Marquee were Headmaster, a vile Van Halen/Benatar ripoff who as I recall it attempted a singalong in their last song ("Oh yeah!") to the deafening sound of (tumblin') tumbleweeds. Excruciating! That's what you'd get at that stupid venue back then though for support acts.

Did anyone ever actually see Zoogz Rift play?

the kids said rock!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIQcPERpcQI

haha thats awful, but at the same time its made me very nostalgic. purest essence of marquee rawk

I remember a terrible glam metal band called the Dirt Merchants opening for Pussy Galore in L.A. in 1989. Similar sort of "who's available to play on Monday night?" feeling.

if you play in a local band you get stuck on all kinds of weird bills

at that point in LA it was probably "who's willing to pay the most to open for Pussy Galore"

I absolutely fucking love "Love Dissolves" on that Angst album and hope one day to like more of it

I kind of think YES, cos I think we need a definitive answer on the Jambang vs Mojack question.

― Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Farting in Space (NickB), Wednesday, March 31, 2010 9:08 AM (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

u&k q imo

Did anyone ever actually see Zoogz Rift play?

I was at this show, but don't remember a thing about ZR

https://hardcoreshowflyers.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/hsf000028.jpg

I would not have imagined ZR played out a lot.

Full disclosure I listened to Island of Living Puke about a hundred times in the late 80s

Full disclosure I wore the grooves clean on Always August "Largeness With (W)holes" in 1987 or so