Leftover College Radio Station Indie Rock Records I Haven't Listened To (And That Nobody Will Buy)

Big Wheel is Peter Searcy singer of Squirrelbaits later band. They were ok.

Did all the Judybats records sell out?

that'a a tough row to hoe, man. looks like fodder for the Dollar Dungeon.

i'll just do band names or i'll be here all day:

shiva burlesque
boiled in lead
three
the swinging erudites
swamp zombies
excessive force
death of samantha
das damen
dessau
donner party
low pop suicide
arsenal
the popinjays
dancing hoods
spinout
reverb motherfuckers
gregory's funhouse
turning curious
primitons
the fundamentals
future neighbors
yo
the conditionz
tictoc
los illegals
open arms
the terrible parade
jonathan segel
the furies
gut bank
girl trouble
glass eye
dogzilla
the big f
big drill car

"that'a a tough row to hoe, man. looks like fodder for the Dollar Dungeon."

ha! i was just thinking of that.

i have about 20 boxes of indie singles that the station messed up by cutting the picture sleeves in half and then taping each side of the sleeve to cardboard? the singles themselves are in fine shape. but kinda pointless without a decent sleeve. they are all in the dungeon.

i kinda LIKE that its such a dread mix of forgotten bands? i don't really want to play any though. i'm leaving out the stuff that people actually like. or that i've heard/played.

I already have a copy of that Jonathan Segel (I assume it's the Story Telling 2LP) but would pay $5-10 for it if I didn't, I like it

death of samantha records possibly worth than a dollar - one guy went on to be in gbv. they have at least 2 great albums btw

Buck Pets were ok. They were for Dallas scenesters mad that Tripping Daisy sold out.

i did just pull a skinner box album out to play. and i am playing this right now:

http://www.recordsbymail.com/uploads/1-5-15-4/37666.jpg

I'll happily take that Slugs record off your hands.

it should be noted: i sold THOUSANDS of these radio records all spring and into summer. there were some true gems. lots of great punk/hardcore/metal.

i would give tarfumes any of these that he wanted if he ever came to greenfield.

was mad keen on das damen when i was 17 - the records on SST are pretty good imo

There's so much anonymous late 80s college rock that all sounds vaguely like REM with no other memorable differentiating qualities.

(also had about 50 boxes of jazz. strata east up the wazoo...)

SO many major label anonymous rem-ish late 80's bands. none of them really hit.

Awesome, this is like a return to "I have never heard this band that starts with the letter..."

I really loved Glass Eye, and I'll rep for Katydids and Popinjays, but man there was just so MUCH of this stuff in the late 80s.

I haven't heard it, but Snap Crackle Pop Art is supposed to be a very good indie singer-songwriter record. I think its hard to find, as well.

didn't reallly like the arsenal records at the time but would be curious to hear them now. it was santiago durango's band after big black along with a guy called malachai ritscher who came to a really bad end:

Born in 1954, Malachai Ritscher was a recording engineer and musician heavily involved in the Chicago jazz & experimental scenes. He died on November 3, 2006, in a public suicide, self-immolating in protest of the US-led Iraq war.

i would give tarfumes any of these that he wanted if he ever came to greenfield.

― scott seward, Thursday, November 9, 2017 12:04 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I may be there next Saturday!

oh boy this oysterband version of 'love vigilantes' is very not good

the spanks
sea stories
the cavedogs
spot 1019
shelleyan orphan
chris hickey
dimmer theater
gruntruck
dogbowl
crazyhead
the american vandals
greater than one
hullabaloo
hex
eighth route army
winter hours
windbreakers
the weathermen
wig
white boy worry
the wild flowers
harm farm
gutterboy
blast paris
the naked into
cattle prod
clay idols
duchampians
close lobsters
chicken scratch
woodcocks
those melvins
starvation army
the slaves
satellite boyfriend
agitpop
slap
sturm group

dear god

Agitpop were OK

I will rep for the Dogbowl records, I like those especially "Tit"

shelleyan orphan - saw them supporting the cure at wembley on the disintegration tour. robert smith was a big fan but i never really got them

close lobsters - i think i'm right in saying ILXOR AHOY!

Yeah Dogbowl stands out for sure. Which records by him?

Close Lobsters are incredible!!! Foxheads is one of my favorite albums.

Spinout later rebooted/morphed into Acetone. NickB OTM re: Death of Samantha. Terrible Parade and Starvation Army also from Cleveland.

sharkey's machine
the citizenz
strawberry zots
the sneetches
king kong
the 700 club
active joy
samiam
god's acre
marcel monroe
wuhling
the nameless
the big thing
swallow
les thugs
soda can
one plus two
olivelawn
bleach
second self
passion fodder
the creepers

do i need to listen to king kong or wuhling? i usually try homestead/touch & go i've never heard.

agitpop are decent minutement-influenced indie rock from minnesota

gruntruck are connected to skin yard i think - early grunge stuff from seattle

crazyhead - third best of the grebo bands iirc

king kong is a slint spin-off but the two records i had were mostly pretty shitty. title track off old man on the bridge is good though

les thugs are great! listen to chess and crimes if you have that one

swallow is early sub pop - kind of biker rock? 'trapped' is a decent song but mostly kind of blurrghh

King Kong were indie faux funk, IIRC.

dancing hoods

who later became sparklehorse

death of samantha records possibly worth than a dollar - one guy went on to be in gbv.

two guys actually. but only one hung around long term.

doug orton
the cucumbers
morticia
repulse kava
the balancing act
vic bondi
coffin break
vertigo
sweet baby
lois
the bloods
attention
the high
blue clocks green
bigger thomas
chain gang
falling stairs
beat feet
rapscallion
skinsect
the young caucasions
the magnolias
the snakes
the whitefronts
the water walk
dharma bums
doughboys
levellers 5
john kruth
john moore and the expressway
spit
the wygals
walkers
we are going to eat you
wreck
love camp 7
kings of wyoming
white glove test
wild choir
waxing poetics
x-tal
the miss alans
madhouse
lmnop
yard trauma
senator flux
victims family
cavedogs
screaming broccoli

i need to listen to the walkabouts? i think i listened to them once because ned likes them so much? maybe i'm remembering wrong.

sad that nobody wants silverfish's cockeye for five bucks. that was a cool comp.

i have bought records by 2 of the bands on your list so far (the windbreakers, shiva burlesque), and had varying degrees of buyers remorse after getting them home and actually listening to them. shiva burlesque was definitely the better of the two, especially if you've ever wondered what would have happened if Echo and the Bunnymen played 12-string guitars and were way more into the Doors (they had grant lee phillips in the band, though not on vocals).

also, the levellers had a song I once loved, but when I listen to it now, i realize how much my critical facilities must have refined since then.

That repulse kava album is great! Twisted aggro psych metal jamming - along the same sort of lines a phantom tollbooth maybe. Check out ‘coercion’

the cucumbers

love camp 7

now we've entered the "people who were friends with fact checking cuz" part of the box. cucumbers debut ep featuring "my boyfriend" was pretty good. the love camp 7 guys founded the fantastic williamsburg recording studio excello.

Owned records by a lot of those bands too, but I don’t know how many times you want me to type ‘this was not good’

Vertigo had some jams though

That wasn’t directed at fcc btw

i'm gonna listen to these comps for the rest of the day. so many bands i've never heard of.

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Secretions/release/1967108
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Downtown-NYC-A-Compilation-Of-The-Best-NYC-Artists/release/5232183
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Welcome-To-Comboland/release/2605901
https://www.discogs.com/Various-San-Jose-Is-Ground-Zero-Were-Number-One/release/3831335
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Tampa-Smokes-II/release/3010021
https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Iowa-Compilation/release/6064936
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Glitch-Sampler-Vol-II-Class-Of-86/release/4120048
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Geyser-Anthology-Of-The-Icelandic-Independent-Music-Scene-Of-The-Eighties/release/880216
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Hit-The-Floor/release/870231
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Glitch-Sampler-Ten-Austin-Groups-In-Black-And-White/release/3839014
https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-View-From-Here-The-San-Francisco-Compilation/release/2662215
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Brain-Food/release/2682634
https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Towers-Of-New-London-Vol-I-The-Bands-Of-The-El-N-Gee/release/2501480
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Make-The-City-Grovel-In-Its-Dust/release/4421096
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Monkey-Business-Green-Monkey-Records-1986-Compilation/release/2604581
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Hog-Butcher-For-The-World/release/535309
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Scream-Sampler-Containing-Really-Exciting-American-Music/release/6687418
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Sorority-Sampler/release/1996913
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Scream-Sampler-Containing-Really-Exciting-American-Music/release/8580555

Chain gang were on the cover of forced exposure once I think, but I didn’t ever get round to hearing them

Yeah, I liked The Cucumbers. The Wygals record is excellent if you like that Individuals/db's Hoboken sound.

"The View From Here" has Camper Van Beethoven covering Country Joe & The Fish, so not a total loss

dig the first song on the first comp i put on. there are LOTS of primitons albums where i live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hTH9G78aNo

i would like to hear the album by the neon judgement : weren't they goth/gloom/EBM/New Beat/Electro ?

john moore and the expressway : these guys were j&mc copyists on their debut album,saw them live, and they did that sound really well.

the high : baggy beats + guitars.

also, there is a Low Pop Suicide album that i need to add to my digital archive, so off go a hunting now, as i seem to recall it being not too bad.

I paid a good $2 for the Ophelias record in 1990, when it was going through its first round of discarding. I wanted "Apron Strings", prime faux-Zep, though this territory was subsequently beaten to death by Jack White

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCrA_a71n1Y

pretty decent indie-pop iirc

Scott, which Swirl 45 is that? The 7" version of 6/8 Lullaby is fantastic. I'm not actually sure if it's a different mix from the LP version though... I thought so.

Otherwise, my favorites in that list are Poole, Edsel & The Raymond Brake.

crush - i had one of their singles but don't really remember the song; i only rescued it from the cheap bin because gary waleik from volcano suns/big dipper was in the band, but bob weston pre-shellac was also a member iirc

crust - buttholes related weirdness from texas. think they were on king coffey's label - trance syndicate?

yes, along with (I think) Drain?

the post-Pavement "one word" indie bands of the 90's... too many people went down that road

you got extra points if it was one syllable.

tizzy

Which record? "New Jersey" or "Betty vs. Veronica"?

uh its a 45. i dunno.

that's the most un-scott seward thing you've ever said

Hm. OK. I probably have it, but I might buy that, too.

xp

TS: One-word-from-the-hardware-aisle bands vs gratuitous-Russ-Myers-reference bands

This is my socket wrench, and it freaks me out!

How could there not have been a band called Socket Wrench?

Or Socket Wench!

google search turns up a fixer-upper page "The Socket Wrench: A Modern Man’s Guide to Tools", obviously their first album

Toad the Wet Socket

Maybe it just looks worse with them all grouped together but some of these band names re-define the concept "we are an ambitious musical act who definitely do not overly wear our influences on our sleeve"

wherefore art thou, wingtip sloat?

Poole - another one of those liked-the-single-I heard bands.
30 Amp Fuse - ditto.
Downy Mildew - owned their albums, sold their albums.
Swirl - ditto. And I mean both the US and AU bands with this name.
Tizzy - ditto.

vomit launch slept on my floor once. #90scred

st. johnny slept on my floor once. but that was when my friend jim was in the band. jim was the leader of the excellent band HED. #onesyllable #openedfornirvana

I still regret selling my Wingtip Sloat singles

I still own records by Shiva Burlesque and Downy Mildew but don't dare play them in case they're truly horrendous. Sometimes you're better off with just the memories of what you once loved.

st. johnny slept on my floor once. but that was when my friend jim was in the band. jim was the leader of the excellent band HED. #onesyllable #openedfornirvana

― scott seward, Friday, November 10, 2017 12:30 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Love their first 2 albums

they were opening for elastica that night in philly. elastica's first show in philly i think and they had all the buzz in the world. packed club. st. johnny were awesome. the atmosphere was electric with joe camel fumes. the geffen thugs looked like they were ready to audition for season one of the sopranos four years early.

elvis hitler asked to sleep on my floor once and i declined because i was pretty sure the risks outweighed the benefits. i have no regrets about this.

listening to the only St. Johnny song on Spotify (From DGC Rarities Vol 1) - "Wild Goose Chasing"

this is good!

so fucking unreal the bands that got signed to majors in the 90s

'twas the greatest generation of rock, everyone called upon to serve in the campaign to rid the world of sub-Nevermind record sales. "Web Publishing with HTML 3.0" was the GI Bill waiting for them when the war was over.

hi Brad I don't like to keep things from you so I wanted to let you know that I was surprised that Manufacture (a fairly by the book late 80s style industrial/dance cru) had a song with Sarah McLachlan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2DNtkkLzg

Tizzy - ditto.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Friday, November 10, 2017 12:24 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tizzy put out two singles, then a CD EP, then two CDs, then another CD EP.

(I joined Tizzy in 2002, and it was a dream come true, as they're one of my favorite bands, and the drummer had previously raged in Crystalized Movements.)

#tizzycred

bands that could've been on these lists that i actually really liked:

horny genius
gobblehoof
big tube squeezer
sister ray
wild seeds
expando brain
viv akauldren
drowning pool
stripminers
ten tall men
flower
dragnet
tvbc
bastards

I <3 Vomit Launch

'twas the greatest generation of rock, everyone called upon to serve in the campaign to rid the world of sub-Nevermind record sales. "Web Publishing with HTML 3.0" was the GI Bill waiting for them when the war was over.

― Mungolian Jerryset (bendy), Friday, November 10, 2017 12:27 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A decent number of these bands played my college town - the Gallery in Normal, IL. Victim's Family played a couple of times, once opening for Alice Donut and that still ranks as one of my fave shows. Others from the list include Big Drill Car, god's acre, les thugs, surgery, gruntruck.

somebody tell me about downy mildew

― brimstead, Friday, November 10, 2017 9:59 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They were okay. They sound at various times like REM, 10,000 Maniacs, The Church, and Mazzy Star, but they're never as good as any of those. I'm listening to them today because it's dark and wintry outside.

Franklin Bruno from Nothing Painted Blue played with the Mountain Goats.

Was just listening to Big Drill Car on Wednesday; their split 7" with Chemical People doing Cheap Trick and Kiss covers. Still love their Small Block EP too.

john moore and the expressway : these guys were j&mc copyists on their debut album

He was in the J&MC, right? I think that's the only reason I hunted down that album back then.

Yeah, he was in the Mary Chain and then later on he was in Black Box Recorder with Luke Haines

somebody tell me about downy mildew

― brimstead, Friday, November 10, 2017 9:59 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Downy mildew refers to any of several types of oomycete microbes that are obligate parasites of plants. Downy mildews exclusively belong to Peronosporaceae. In commercial agriculture, they are a particular problem for growers of crucifers, grapes and vegetables that grow on vines.

ha!!

their first record + the name looked really familiar. plus it's tagged as "ethereal" on discogs so i was intrigued

Flower! Fantastic band, precursor of Versus. I chatted up the lead singer before a gig, top bloke.

If that Skinner Box is the dream pop one with what sounds like a detuned upright piano (The Playhouse / The Imaginary Heart Of), its a keeper. Like the Hex (if the Steve Kilbey/Donnette Thayer duo), it was one of rather few albums that hit my 4AD/goth-lite buttons in the late 80s, before I discovered the Projekt mail-order catalog.

Scott, do you do much mail order?

Lots of familiar names from my distant past here. Going to single out one:

joey kline - pomp and circus pants - popllama - 1988

This I still have plenty of time for -- Joey was a long running member of Seattle legends the Squirrels (and they're back so I think he is too). "Mrs. Smith," which leads off the album, remains one of the best Morrissey slams I've heard. (And since FWIW Joey's openly gay himself this neatly sidestepped the Warlock Pinchers problem.)