MX-80 SOUND C/D

Yeah, enough leftover PCB-sludge from the Westinghouse Corp to warrant eight separate federal Superfund clean-up sites, thus inspiring the MX80 song "Tidal Wave."

I think Bloomington pride is why I'm keeping these albums around.

...one of the owners/founders of which store was the drummer for said band in their late-80s incarnation.

Chuck: I was the proud owner of both "Hard Attacks" a year before "Stairway To Hell" was published! But (along with Richard Riegel) you get full credit for hipping me to the band in the first place.

Ian: "Existential Lover" is good-but-not-great. Good songs sabotaged by the lack of a human drummer and some listless Rich Stim vocals. No doubt law school was consuming the bulk of his energy.

brg30: I think "Always Leave 'em...", like most live MX-80, suffers from Stim's inability to effectively sing & play at the same time. The great live stuff from the all-instrumental "Das Love Boat" is the exception that kinda proves the rule.

jwd: Of the "Subterranean Modern" tracks, only "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" has made it to CD, on "Das Love Boat." Minor trivia note: "San Francisco" is the only MX-80 cover of an actual song that's NOT a TV/movie theme! (At least, until "We're An American Band" is released.)

Finally, Hard Attack and Das Love Boat may be deleted, so I'll gladly burn copies for anyone curious enough to pay for postage. This band, and its impenetrable roadblock-of-sound demands to be heard!

And in case I haven't gotten my tiresome message through:

http://www.mx-80.com/images/discography/HardAttack.jpg
...greatest album evah!

Also not mentioned on this thread is a great live album "1977 Live At The Library 1978" that was recorded when they were still in B-ton. The newly reconstituted Gulcher label put it out a few years back.

Dave Mahoney RIP

I wish I had that! One showed up on ebay and I kicked myself for seeing it too late.

From the band's Forced Exposure interview:

FE: Is it true that the Dutch pressing has a different mix? Does that really exist?

Dale: Yeah. It's the original mix in fact.

Bruce: Basically, what happened is that the A&R person who signed us up, Howard Thompson, decided there wasn't enough compression on it. So he compressed it and gave it a "vocal" mix.

I read somewhere that the CD reissue reverted to the original mix. But I've played both the LP and CD over 1000 times and can't tell the difference, so either that source was misinformed or my ears just aren't that great. (On the other hand, I haven't played the vinyl since the CD was released 11 years ago, so maybe it's my memory that's at fault. Who knows?)

(Oh, and thanks for posting that link, Ned.)

As for MX-80 Sound, I prefer the two-drum attack sound, but still love the early 80s releases.

Any fans of Debris? I can't ever quite get into them as much, but they definitely share some qualities with MX-80 Sound.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ujxTJoMhroU/SUwlL8MGtZI/AAAAAAAAAnI/Wcbf3lhiWEY/s1600-h/MX-80+Sound%234.jpg

But life couldn't be lusher
Now that I've got an ice crusher

CRUSHED! ICE!
CRUSHED! ICE!

Yeah good band. I got introduced to them by the Forcedexposure cover feature. Have the Atavistic cds plus a few live sets that were Dimed some time back.

Also love Debris, Vertical Slit and wish I knew my way through what else is out there along the same lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIHBehzE5l8

For a split second in the end, many get an idea what their stage presence was.

Is that the only video from the time? It was the only one pre-92 I could find on youtube when I looked last week.

Yep, I believe that's the only video record of that band afaik.

(But their entire '77 "Live At The Library" show was recorded on videotape! That's just gotta be released someday, right?)

Have Hard Attack on vinyl

Anybody rec. me a decent table to play it on apart from snooker, billiards or table tennis etc. Sorry

These chaps were fucking weird to me. At least 5 years ahead and from bumfuck too. Excellent

Also love Debris, Vertical Slit and wish I knew my way through what else is out there along the same lines.

― Stevolende, Saturday, February 25, 2012 2:04 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

good question, cuz the stuff that i associate most closely with MX-80 sound and the other bands stevolende mentions tends to much less aggressively avant: simply saucer, fungus brains/venom p. stinger, electric eels, rocket from the tombs, etc. would love to think there's a bunch more seriously art & noise damaged alien punk out there. i mean, i guess chrome qualify, but they're a good deal more well-known than MX-80.

Twinkeyz!

their entire '77 "Live At The Library" show was recorded on videotape! That's just gotta be released someday, right?)

― Race Against Rockism (Myonga Vön Bontee), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 18:19 (4 hours ago)

As a former Bloomington resident, I can almost guarantee you that this video is languishing in the cable access archives in the Bloomington Public Library. For more info you might want to write the folks at MFT Archives in Indiana, http://musicalfamilytree.ning.com/

just found this in the comments about MX80 Sound at a blog called
North Fork sound
http://northforksound.blogspot.com/2008/12/mx-80-sound.html
the blog writer compares the English & Dutch versions of Hard Attack and says
"ok, it's the same mix but the UK pressing has more high/mid (in the 8 - 10KHz, I would guess) on it, making Rich's voice a bit more 'present' and the overall sound perhaps a little thinner. One could argue, however, that the guitar has a touch more 'bite' to it and the drums sound crisper. Both sound fantastic on headphones cranked up loud!"

So there's the answer to a question I think gets asked in the thread above.

*head explodes*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtqsjaU3MPI

velmawallenrod 1 week ago

I'm currently working on the next installment of the MX-80 reissue series, and it will feature a full album's worth of entirely unreleased material from their (vast) vaults. The number of compositions they came up with in a several year period, and jettisoning most of them as they went, is astonishing. It should be released on the Superior Viaduct label in a few months, after the vinyl reissue of the re-mixed "Hard Attack" (which is due out shortly... check their web site for updates).

*head explodes again*

vinyl reissue of the re-mixed "Hard Attack"

aw hell yeah! great news.

As someone who owns 4 minutely different vinyl versions of "Hard Attack" (plus a fifth for good measure), I concur

yeah shit yeah

Picked up the "Hard Attack" reissue lp this wknd, sounds great

Man, can't wait for unreleased MX-80 Sound. The Chinaboise thing is pretty underrated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7BIDXQmo5A

MX-80 SOUND - Hard Attack 2CD
Debut album restored from the original analog tapes (also available in vinyl edition) + 19 unreleased songs from 1976-1978.

http://www.superiorviaduct.com/collections/cds/products/mx-80-sound-hard-attack-2cd

omg, this release is practically everything it could've been!

It was 18 years from the release of "Hard Attack" until its first CD reissue, and here it is again another 18 years after that. And with a slightly different, new bass-heavy mix, some may think it sounds even better this time around. I'm not necessarily among them ("Civilized/Demeyes" in particular sounds quite a bit bonier than every other mix I've heard), but I do appreciate being able to really HEAR Dale's bass lines for the first time. The stuff he plays on "Summer '77" in particular is a revelation. (Also, there's no "Sad Girls" on this edition like the '95 Atavistic added to theirs, but I guess the integrity of the original LP is preserved this way.)

And the bonus stuff on the second disc! Over an hour of it, live/studio/rehearsals recorded from '76-78, in good-to-great audio and uniformly tighhht performance. Some highlights:

"Felonious Funk", "Stranger's Friend" - Outtakes from the "Hard Attack" sessions (all two days of them), these were previously heard on the "Live At The Library" CD, but it's lovely hearing 'em clearly with that highwire Gilfoy Studio sound. Also worth noting: the lyrics are completely different this time around, which maybe demonstrates just how fluid the lyrics could be, since both were recorded in April of '77. (How much material did these guys HAVE, anyways?)

"Rockin' Robots" - I've always called the 1976-79 edition of this band my favourite American band ever (or close enough) and the dual drum team of Jeff Armour/Dave Mahoney are the reason why - I seriously can't think of another drum team that sounds like 'em, that incomparable tight looseness. Can't tell what was rehearsed, what was improvised, and what was a brilliant mistake. This track gives a good example of what I mean.

"Sit Down" - This, better than the two or three imitation-Henny Youngman my-wife's-cooking bits scattered throughout the disc, is one of the best displays of Rich Stim's crackpot sense of humour: a "Tighten Up" styled little R&B jam with Rich attempting some JB-style "huh!"s and pseudo-lecturing some hypothetical guy in the crowd who wants to take his shirt off and dance to "come on, siddown. Hey SIT DOWN!" Plus he throws in some excellent "Super Bad"-style free alto blowing.

"What The..." Along with "Tidal Wave" and "Someday You'll Be King", the most purely Punk Rock they ever got. (Wish I could make out a single word. Or find this song in my "How Can..." lyric book.)

"Rock Mini", "Spoonfight" - BRUCE FUCKIN' ANDERSON YOU ARE MY GUITAR GOD

And that's about 25 minutes of this!

Maybe the most amazing thing about this document is just how much material these guys had...could've released full LPs of new songs each year between their first and 2nd full albums - as many as Devo, and one more than Television, to name two bands who these guys have reminded me of for at least a song or two at a time. (Others are Ubu, Chrome, minutemen, Burma, B-52s, Tubeway Army, etc etc.)

So happy to see the circle-p next to the band's name on the back cover - that suggests that they own all their own stuff, and that we might see more archival releases someday. (Again: the material that these guys had! There are still two dozen songs in that songbook that have never surfaced.) Would love to see a box set of those legendary Monroe County Public Library gigs, or at least that '76 one from the Time Out Tavern. Until then I'll thank the boys for this labour of love. (Oh yeah, there's some nice live-in-the-living room and elsewhere photos. And a dedication to both Jeff Armour and Dave Mahoney...so I guess Jeff is dead, too. sadly. RIP)

...so I guess nobody else is interested in this, yes?

Oh I am definitely interested in vinyl reissue of Hard Attack.

i was bummed that i missed the release show

Have been trying to work out if I need it if I already have the Atavistic version plus Live At The Library. Hadn't heard about bass orientated remixing or anything.
Is much of Live at the Library on there?

Label did a good job with the Devo Hardcore set so might look into this if I get some dosh.

The vinyl reissue looks and sounds awesome. I am sure I will pick up the cd at some point.

slightly annoying that the download code you get with the vinyl doesn't give you the bonus tracks from the double cd...

The atavistic cd is mis-tracked, though that affects the single more. Remastered, so of course more gain now, but the bass is more prominent as well. Atavistic CD gives you "Sad Girls" as a bonus.

About a dozen or so tracks from various library gigs, but nothing repeated from the 2002 Live At The Library 1977-78 release on Gulcher...although both releases do feature tracks from a particular May '78 show. xpost to Stevo

Thanks, does sound pretty necessary then.

Really cool long piece about the band, bringing them up to the present day

https://www.bynwr.com/articles/long-distance-information

I tracked down 2015's "So Funny" which passed me by (it's on bandcamp) and it is very cool

thanks the the bump, I need to track down that expanded Hard Attack reissue

I knew a few of those guys for quite a while before I knew they had been in this band. I think it was shortly after Weasel moved to Oakland ... and he told me about MX80 and asked if I knew any of these people, and he listed a couple names. And my response was like ... Dale? The guy that runs that movie theater in Berkeley?

RIP Bruce Anderson.

So sad! Now that this makes me finally think to check, tons of stuff on their Bandcamp.

A good tribute to the band from Albini:

https://t.co/qc9vahnA12

— steve albini (@electricalWSOP) January 12, 2022

Arrgh this is shit news indeed. Still remember my amazement when I heard Hard Attack for the first time

Bruce worked at Amoeba at the same time I did in '00-01. I don't think I've crossed paths with him since then but he really made me laugh. They were like THE Amoeba band.

RIP - one of a kind!

total legend and one of Bloomington's legends especially, their shadow loomed large

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

One of my favourite guitarists ever

Found out that Live At the Library was on Spotify earlier but the band has about 4 different listings and they don't seem to be interconnected on the site MX-80, MX-80 Sound, MX80 Sound etc

Would be good if the cd of Live At the library was reissued. Cos i think it's great stuff.
Also remember the Forcedexposure cover story being really good and probably my introduction to the band.

I wound up with a Di leva cd in the mid 90s and then found out that she was married to one of the 2 guitarists but I can't remember which