Various Artists - Dope-Guns-'N-Fucking in the Streets Volumes 8-11 (1997)

  Amphetamine Reptile Records ■ 9 25194-1

Released April 22, 1997

Technical Credits Unknown, Likely Varied

Side One (Vol. 8 & 9):	Side Two (Vol 10 & 11):
Superchunk - "Basement Life" Guzzard - "Bites" Jawbox - "Low Strung" godheadSilo - "Lotion Pocket" Bordeoms - "Pukuri" Supernova - "Sugar Coated Stucco" Chokebore - "Brittle & Depressing" Love 666 - "You Sold Me Out #2"	Bailter Space - "Glimmer Dot" Steelpolebathtub - "A Washed Out Monkey Star Halo" Chrome Cranks - "Dead Man's Suit" Brainiac - "Cookie Doesn't Sing" Today Is the Day - "Execution Style" Rocket from the Crypt - "Tiger Mask" Calvin Krime - "Fight Song" Gaunt - "Kiss Destroyer" Servotron - "Matrix of Perfection"

I'm often wary, wandering into any record store for the first time. There's no real guarantee of what anyone has or will carry, and in a used store it becomes even more complicated, as they can only carry what records they've acquired to sell. And that, then, depends on the locals. The first time I walked into Dead Wax Records, I wasn't sure what to think. Between the place I now live and the places I work, there's not a lot of music to be found. Even the oft-ignored (for financially justifiable reasons) FYE and similar "TWEC" (TransWorld Entertainment Company, who owns FYE, Coconuts, etc) stores make no appearances. There's a Best Buy, a Wal-Mart, a Target--certainly nowhere you'd find vinyl (beyond the semi-kitschy '7" with a t-shirt' thing Target is doing--but I owned most of the ones that looked interesting to me, or saw no reason to get the 7"), and nowhere you'd find a good chunk of my music collection, vinyl or otherwise.

I found a small used record and used/new CD store about fifteen miles away and had a very strange experience there, locating both upstate New York's Immolation's third album and some Split Enz albums I was looking for on CD. I found some Throbbing Gristle material, too, which is only appropriate for this particular entry--well, parts of it. I couldn't really make heads or tails of the place, though I've intended to go back a few times (never managing). When I started my current job just a bit further out, though, someone there mentioned a local record store, which piqued my interest immediately. I swung by after work that day, only to find it was closed on Mondays, deciding to come back the next. That next day, I wandered in and found it comfortably cozy and close, as you'd expect from a fledgling (only a few months old!) record store. However, its walls were papered with posters and fliers for bands I knew well--but knew well from my forays into music in the last few odd years more than anything else. Snapcase. Gluecifer. The Murder City Devils. The Supersuckers. Turbonegro. Mudhoney. All the sorts of things I'd tried (sometimes successfully) to push on a very picky person I know.

Day Fifty-Two - Needle Scratch: The Two Dollar Pistols with Tift Merritt

Yep Roc Records ■ YEP-2015

Released October 26, 1999

(Vinyl released December 11, 2012)

Produced by Byron Mckay and John Howie, Jr.

Engineered by Byron McKay

Mastered by Tim Harper

Side One:	Side Two:
If Only You Were Mine Just Someone I Used to Know We Had It All Suppose Tonight Could Be Our Last	Counting the Hours (I'm So) Afraid of Losing You Again One Paper Kid

This will mark the second time I've fiddled with the alphabet in writing here, but I think my reasons have been solid in their non-arbitrary nature at both times--last time, I was covering an album on its release, and this time, well, I'd just been hoping to see a Two Dollar Pistols vinyl release to put up here anyway, and within days of stating this "aloud" this appeared before me for order, which I proceeded to place immediately (of course!). In and of itself, that would be a bit of a cheat as there are other albums I've deliberately looked up to keep my end-of-letter lists short, but this one is a release by someone who has been open and supportive of both of my attempts at writing, including this very blog. That, too, wouldn't necessarily dictate shifting the order of writing, but the fact that it's his birthday? That, I can make an exception for.

Day Forty-One: Codeine - Frigid Stars LP

Numero Group ■ 201.1

(Originally released on Sub Pop)

Released August, 1990

This compilation released June 19, 2012

Produced by Mike McMackin and Codeine

Side One:	Side Two:
D Gravel Bed Pickup Song 3 Angels New Year's	Second Chance Cave-In Cigarette Machine Old Things Pea

Around the time I moved out of my last home, I realized that I was moving somewhere that record stores were not going to be anything like convenient (and so they aren't--it's at least an hour's drive to find new records). So, with a measure of money in hand (that which I thought I could spare), I decided to "clean house" on my desired purchases at the then-local stores. While I was, in majority, picking up CDs I'd been eyeing for sometime, I also decided that the temptation of the Codeine reissues was just too great. I asked the owner of CD Alley in Chapel Hill (whose band may show up here later, if I continue intermittent reviews of 7"s) if he had a stance, and he said unfortunately he had not personally gone in the direction of Codeine, and had never heard one singled out. I've worked enough retail that, considering they were five or ten minutes from closing, I decided to just grit my teeth and grab one. Frigid Stars LP was the first album, so it seemed like a logical starting point for me as well.

Day Thirty-Six: Caustic Window - Compilation

Rephlex Records ■ CAT009LP

Released June 1, 1998
(EP release dates below)

Produced by Richard D. James

Let's just get this out of the way up front: I'm cheating. While the credited artist for this release is "Caustic Window", that is, in fact, one of the (many) pseudonyms of one Richard D. James, whose most famous monikers are AFX and, of course, The Aphex Twin. If you've been reading here a while, or if you just click that link, you'll see that this is not the first of his releases for me to cover here. However, because I feel it's legitimate to treat this as a "C" release (alphabetically speaking), it avoids the issue of clustering multiple days around a single artist and allows me to cover more of my collection while not (strictly) violating the alphabet. It's not the only time this will occur, but this is the time they'll come closest together (the other I can think of off the top of my head is Leon Russell, who will obviously appear much later, but who released two albums with Marc Benno, at least the first of which was credited originally to The Asylum Choir).

Day Twelve: At the Gates - Slaughter of the Soul

Earache Records ■  MOSH 143

Released November 14, 1995

Produced by Fredrik Nordstrom, Co-Produced by At the Gates

"We are blind to the worlds within us, waiting to be born..."

Side One:	Side Two:
Blinded by Fear Slaughter of the Soul Cold Under a Serpent Sun Into the Dead Sky	Suicide Nation World of Lies Unto Others Nausea Need The Flames of the End

This is actually an interesting title to discuss, as it actually also puts me in the awkward place of talking about a classic album, which was something I intended to somewhat avoid by going through my own record collection instead of a set of albums pre-determined by history or anything of the kind. Naturally, I'm not defiant about classics and do own plenty (and far more if we look at my CD collection), but I'm occasionally peculiar about how I purchase vinyl in particular. 

Day Eleven: At the Drive-In - Vaya

Fearless Records ■  F040-1

Released July 13, 1999

Recorded and mixed by Mike Major [1,5,7], Alex Newport [2,4], and Justin Leah & Bobby Torres [6]. Tracks 3,6 produced by Sean Cummings

Side One:	Side Two:
Rascuache Proxima Centauri Ursa Minor Heliotrope	Metronome Arthritis 300 MHz 198d

I originally decided, because I was starting with an artist that had the same split of releases in my collection, that I would leave EPs by the wayside for artists for whom I owned a full length LP. I decided to skip that "rule" on this occasion simply because I know a number of people who are big fans of this band--other than me, I mean. It also tends to come with a love that drives adamant opinions, and occasionally divides. When At the Drive-In broke up in 2001, it was the only time I really noticed or felt the loss of a band--I'd never seen them live (to be honest, even when they reunited ten years later, I did not rush out for the very distant and often festival-based events, either). It also led to the rise of two groups--they'd just released their Nevermind in popularity terms, or maybe just the hint toward it, and that was that--Sparta and the Mars Volta. When I last wrote about them, I was disinclined to make my rather well-known, passionate opinion on that split known. I'm still disinclined: too many times, I've seen expressed opinions on this front devolve rapidly into swearing, shouting matches, and insults. It has left me with a bad taste in my mouth a lot of the time as regards all three bands, which does not make me very happy. As a result, I tend to avoid discussing that as much as I can, even if I still occasionally feel the desire to talk about it.

Day Eight: Aspera Ad Astra - Peace

AudioInformationPhenomena ■ AIP 003

Released: ??, 1998

Produced and Recorded by Carmine Degennaro

"let the uplifting messages bring joy and goodness to your life and those surrounding. peace and love."

[From the insert included with the album]

Side One:	Side Two:
Taking to Waking Sick N' Sad Step Into Me [Untitled] Scannin' Lights	The Yellowed Skin This Whim Breathes Fat in the Eye Takin' It Easy

I touched on this band on my previous/other blog, but didn't say too much about the album proper. Of course, I've forgotten over the years (repeatedly, actually) that this is yet another release (see also: Provocation and Kali Yuga Bizarre)with goofed up track listings. The back of the sleeve (as well as the CD case, I've just confirmed) lists the tracks as "Taking to Waking", "Sick N' Sad", "Step Into Me", "This Whim Breathes", "Fat in the Eye", "Scannin' Lights", "The Yellowed Skin", and "Take It Easy". The label on Side Two lists them in the order above, and, as usual, the lyrics are the giveaway. It appears the listing I've given in my standardized form is the most correct one ("fat in the eye" is completely audible and intelligible in the third track on Side Two, rather than the fourth track on Side One). "Takin' It Easy" could go either way, but seeing as the order appears correct on the label, I'll go with the title that appears in the same place. I know at various times I've also had the first track titled "Talking to Walking," though I'm not sure why. I think it may have been in the metadata of my initial digital copy.

Day Seven: Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92

 R&S Records ■ AMB LP 3922/AMB LP 3902

Released: November, 1992
Produced by Richard D. James

Side A:	Side B:
Xtal Tha Pulsewidth	Ageispolis i Green Calx Heliosphan
Side C:	Side D:
We Are the Music Makers Schottkey 7th Path Ptolemy	Hedphelym Delphium Actium

While high school was the time I began to really delve into music in general, it was also the time at which I began to seriously explore beyond that which I'd heard and was now beginning to identify. I had a brief period (as seemingly many in recent generations do) of clinging to music from the past as means to identify myself: bristling and holding people at bay by judging whether they were familiar with Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd before anything else. Seemingly unlike modern generations in this state, my friends and I did not explicitly reject modern music as inherently inferior or devoid of quality. Indeed, the modern bands we listened to most in the midst of high school were played  happily on the radio, and some were just a few years back and were part of our more formative years and already carried a sense of personal nostalgia.

Day Six: Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies | SAP

	Columbia Records ■ C2 57804
	Released January 24, 1994
	Jar of Flies	Sap
	Produced by Alice in Chains Engineered by Toby Wright	Produced by Alice in Chains and Rick Parash[a]r

Jar of Flies

Originally released January 25, 1994

Side One:	Side Two:
Rotten Apple Nutshell I Stay Away No Excuses Whale and Wasp	Don't Follow Swing on This

Sap

Originally released February 4, 1992

Side One:	Side Two:
Brother Got Me Wrong Right Turn Am I Inside [Love Song Take 1]	[Etching of Alice in Chains Logo]

No two ways about it: this is a weird release. If you expand the image above by clicking on it, you can see the etching I refer to on side four (no, I didn't "play" it, I just flipped the second record over for the picture). Even outside the fact that it's a 3-sided release on a format that can only be manufactured with even numbers of sides, this is a combination of two EPs that, in total runtime, would necessitate two records even if they weren't split one on a record or were re-configured to maximize the space on each side of a record.

Day Two: Aborym - Kali Yuga Bizarre

Scarlet Records ■ SC005-1

Release April 1, 1999

Produced by Christian Ice and Malfeitor Fabban

Engineered by Christian Ice

Side One:	Side Two:
Wehrmacht Kali Ma Horrenda Peccata Christi Hellraiser Roma Divina Urbs	Darka Mysteria Tantra Bizarre Come Thou Long Expected Jesus Metal Striken Terror Action The First Four Trumpets Tantra Bizarre [C30 Version] - Exclusive to vinyl

I originally debated inclusion of this record in my collection for a few reasons. Some may be surprised to see a photo of a non-standard record in my collection that they have not seen before, but this is for the same essential reasons. Some years ago, I purchased a used copy of Diabolical Masquerade's Death's Design (more on that in a few months, I suppose!) and brought it back to my then-dorm room only to find that, crammed inside, was this picture disc, for no apparent reason. I'd never heard of Aborym, and had no earthly idea what this was, but figured it couldn't hurt to have. The first time I played it, I realized it was absolutely trashed with surface noise--crackles, pops, and constant noise coated an already noisy band. It didn't make for easy listening--not in the sense that I was put off, but that it was literally difficult to hear the music itself. I stuck it in a simple plastic sleeve and left it at that, often forgetting I even owned it. Sadly enough, it's one of 1,000 in existence and remains in pretty terrible condition, as I can't exactly repair a bunch of scratches and dings that were in it long before I ever had it. I am left wondering (not for the first time) why someone would buy a limited record that had no idea how to care for a record, yet would take it out and fiddle with it enough to do this to it. Especially in an age where records are nowhere near the dominant format. Still, onward and upward!