Sunday, June 12, 2011

NME 21 - Pogo a Go Go


I am reposting this blog post from 2009 because it was offline for a while and has a lot of tracks that are rare and sought after.

Here is another of the rare NME cassettes released with the magazine in the early 80s, a number of which you can find elsewhere on this blog. These tapes featured a variety of styles from jazz, pop, reggae, even african, to punk, which is what they tape is. Each of them has a lot of tracks from bands that are quite obscure and impossible to find elsewhere. This one has unreleased tracks from the Sex Pistols and The Clash that are not released. Even though this compilation came out on CD, the unreleased tracks were not included. So this is the only place you can find them.

Unfortunately, the cassette quality is not so amazing. Some of the last tracks on the B side, such as the Buzzcocks track have a slight waiver in the pitch and the Sex Pistols track has a bit of a buzz in it now and then. But it's great to hear the Sex Pistols guy say something at the end of the demo recording. And the tracks by The Fall, Elvis Costello and The Slits are all good quality and also fantastic tracks. "Part Time Punks" is also great for its tale (even when punk was big) about people who do Punk for the aesthetic, not for the principle. Aesthetic is my principle, though, and I'm not ashamed of it. I'm a punk in other ways.

A1 Sex Pistols - Satellite (Suburban Kid) (unreleased version)
A2 Undertones - True Confessions
A3 Nipple Erectors - King Of The Bop
A4 Television Personalities - Part Time Punks
A5 Sham 69 - Borstal Breakout
A6 The Damned - Stretcher Case Baby
A7 Elvis Costello & the Attractions - Watching The Detectives
A8 The Stranglers - Choosey Susie
A9 Victim - Strange Thing By Night
B1 The Clash - 1977 (demo)
B2 Johnny Moped - Incendiary Device
B3 Slits - Typical Girls
B4 Alternative TV - Love Lies Limp
B5 Swell Maps - Read About Seymour
B6 The Jam - In The City
B7 The Fall - Bingo Master's Breakout
B8 Subway Sect - Ambition
B9 Wire - Dot Dash
B10 Buzzcocks - Orgasm Addict

Friday, June 10, 2011

Maria & the Mirrors - Travel Sex EP


I'm a big believer in people.  I want to believe that special people have something special that will make them keep doing special things.  Maybe this is because I want to believe in heroes.  When I hear a really good band I want to believe there is something special about their songwriting that no one else can imitate and want to believe that they will continue to do amazing things.  This is why I continue to be intrigued by Metronomy for example.

Maria & the Mirrors is a band that I've loved from the first time I saw them at the Offset festival a few years ago.  Since then I've written about them and they have done various gigs and blah blah.  But they're still around and they have a new ep out called Travel Sex and I still think their sound is unique, raw, trancelike and not formulaic.  It's like 3 blind people trying to map Godzilla's skin in Logic. . . 

This is not the title track from the ep but I like it probably best. I assume it was named after this film but who knows.  I didn't ask.


Valerie a tyden divu