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

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

Sharkey's Machine were originally called Killdozer, forming about the same time as the other band, and tried to get the other band to stop using the name, but that band didn't care if there were two Killdozers. I remember playing Sharkey's Machine on the college radio station, but I cant remember what it was like. I've mentally filed them with Live Skull.

victor delorenzo - peter corey sent me - chameleon/dali - 1990

The drummer from the Violent Femmes had a solo outing? I did not know.

mucky pup - can't you take a joke? - torrid - 1988

Bought this and three other Mucky Pup albums after being blown away by their joke-punk on the Bloom County flexi-disc. I don't remember much about this particular release, but it does contain the couplet: Adolph Hitler - a dangerous man?/I heard he got caught with this dick in his hand! They were fighting the good fight.

after being blown away

*I was 11 at the time.

post-r.e.m. the amateurishness goes away which is kinda sad. one dollar production makes jangle-indie sound more charming. so amazing how crappy (in a not good way) so much u.s. stuff sounds in comparison to u.k. stuff. just more ambience in cheap u.k. studios i guess.

its like the difference between the studio sound of 1980-1983 u.s. hardcore and 1984 and beyond u.s. hardcore. did all the studios get new equipment in 1984? that big horrible echo-y sound. metal bands seemed to know how to get the sound they needed for the most part. though they got a lot more pillow-y too until death metal got going.

Boiled in Lead was a Minneapolis Celtic/indie rock band that did quite well locally live for many years, but that Irish-y stuff always has a pretty loyal audience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMlaDcsWRy0

the Magnolias are local powerpop/punk legends, they still play, great band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oK9oH7HLJc

coffin break

Unremarkable but I got a kick out of their Freebird cover when I was a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LzeX22sHwo

agitpop are decent minutement-influenced indie rock from minnesota

actually upstate NY but were on Twin Town

coffin break did good covers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjh97hVmJVc

the Cucumbers were cute

i def saw Coffin Break and Boiled in Lead live

Saw boiled in lead live once as well - they played the reading festival in 89 iirc?

lois is a twee legend, iirc

That dharma bums album had some bangers on it. Post REM jangle but with the raucousness of early soul asylum. John peel used to play this track:

https://youtu.be/d2fAiSev10Q

oyster band : peel fave cos they did a cracking cover version of a new order track (love vigilantes), but in an upbeat roots/celtic style.
saw them live at reading'90 while the pixies were on the main stage, and had a brilliant time.

i'm going to call it and say that 1986 was the nadir for non-rap/dance music production in the u.s.

unless 1987 was.

one dollar production makes jangle-indie sound more charming.

otm

lois is a twee legend, iirc

she later became courtney love. the band, not the person.

/pedant/ that pre-dated the Lois albums

Courtney Love singles are great, I still have two of the three

(xp) ah, thank you. fact checking cuz very much appreciates fact checking, obvi.

June Tabor is in Oyster Band!!!!

crazyhead - third best of the grebo bands iirc

'bad news travels fast' was their big crowd pleaser i think.
one of the better grebo bands, but no idea what i would think if i heard them now!

or maybe that was just for one album? did they back her up? is that a totally different oyster band?

xp

Oysterband are the only band on here so far to have had a number one single in the UK - they did Day Trip To Bangor under the name Fiddlers Dram

i only included oyster band because of the new order cover. they were obviously looking for some of that Clannad crossover money.

i feel like i've been staring at that syd straw album in dollar bins for as long as i've been staring at cindy lee berryhill's debut in dollar bins or that marti jones debut in dollar bins. all three should tour together.

i'm going to call it and say that 1986 was the nadir for non-rap/dance music production in the u.s.

unless 1987 was.

― scott seward, Thursday, November 9, 2017 1:51 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bands that didn't have access to professional studios in the early '80s knew that one guy across town with a 4-track reel-to-reel, plus that other guy who we could totally borrow a mixer and some mics from. The goal of such recordings was just that everything could be heard; there was no way to approximate big production.

Then these bands came back from tour with a little money, and maybe a label willing to put out a record and pay for time in a pro studio. Studio time! I didn't think we could do that! Now it can sound "professional"!

oh god, so otm

"Cyclops Nuclear Submarine Captain" by Dogbowl is great. His other albums don't deviate much from it but aren't as good. Haven't heard any that stuff in years though.

in 1985 the sound got so mushy here! like, just terribly weak and that infernal echo and everything got gauzy and indistinct. just abysmal drum sounds. things actually improved when people started recording for CD. i never thought i would type that sentence. but at least you could hear the music again.

maybe the don gehman cougar mellencampisms of lifes rich pageant made people tighten their sound up too. this is merely conjecture. 1985 was ground zero for "atmospherics". but there was no budget mike hedges to make your crappy enigma record death rock sound like hyaena.

This is upthread a ways now, but aren't Samiam pretty well-known in certain 90s punk/emo circles? I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a buyer for one of their early records.

its like the difference between the studio sound of 1980-1983 u.s. hardcore and 1984 and beyond u.s. hardcore. did all the studios get new equipment in 1984? that big horrible echo-y sound.

― scott seward, Thursday, November 9, 2017 12:36 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've wondered about this too! It went hand-in-hand with stylistic shifts in hardcore that I also mostly hate.

Started back in '83
Started seeing things differently
And hardcore wasn't doing it for me
No More
Started smoking pot
Thought things sounded better slow
Much slower and heavier
Black magic melody to sink this poser's soul

(I also vastly prefer pre-84 USHC)

I heard Greater Than One on college radio just a couple days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nRjmS_qAQc

The Windbreakers and Winter Hours are both fantastic bands. I love them both.

Ah darn - someone already claimed The Slugs record

this old neon judgement song is cool.. totally harsh awesome coldwavey thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-1WjgkIbX0

yeah, good band

I love old Neon Judgement. Don't know that album though

re neon judgement : thought so.
tis very alien sex fiend vs LS6.
if only my local charity shops had such excellence.

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.)