Death of Samantha - If Memory Serves Us Well

I love bands from Ohio.  I mean, I live here and I like to be a part of my local community, and I kind of consider the whole state my community.  I think a lot of us here are like that.  We're definitely Homers.  I mean, our sports talk stations ignore national stuff, even big stuff like the World Series or NBA Finals for the most part, so that we can analyze whatever the most crushing needs of The Browns are in the upcoming draft, or why The Indians should just break down and buy that one big bat.  If the World Series is The Yankees and Dodgers, we'll mention it, but always quickly change it to whatever is going on locally.

I love that about Cleveland.

I like sports, but music is definitely my passion.  I love Rock N' Roll.  I love guitars.  I'd have been bored out of my skull if I had been born into a world where there were no distorted guitars.  But I got lucky, and I'm here now, and I live in a city where there's always been some flat out great bands.  Yeah, you've never heard of them, but the bands in Ohio are as good as any bands from anywhere, if you ask me.

So I've had the recent Death of Samantha retrospective album for a little while now, and I've only got one of their ep's so this has been a welcome addition.  These guys were all over in the second half of the 80's around here.  They were really popular on the live circuit, but WMMS was in a tailspin around then and too busy with their heads up Michael Jackson's ass to bother blowing away N.E. Ohio with Death of Samantha.  WCSB played them, and that was good enough for me.  Hell, back then I was really mostly into The Stones, so I didn't care if 'MMS played anything other than The Stones, because I could listen to the new music I liked on college radio.  Those were pretty great days, even though I was really broke with a young family.

So Death of Samantha probably left a bigger footprint than most of you are aware of.  Doug Gillard is pretty well known for playing in Cobra Verde and Guided By Voices, along with John Petkovic (who writes for The Plain Dealer these days).  One of the things I never liked hearing about a lot of Cleveland bands is how they're some kind of avant garde Art Rock.  This happens a lot.  Their live shows were spectacles, but there's a lot of bands in Cleveland and you need to set yourself apart somehow.  Having a great show to go with your great songs doesn't make you Art Rock.  I just don't like that label.  It makes me think all the people in the audience are beatniks or some other beret wearing hipster doofus type of crowd.  Cleveland crowds respond to passion and we drink beer and liquor.  Turn it up and bring some fun and we're on board.  We don't have to call it anything but Rock N' Roll, okay?

I don't know if anyone reading this (I have a worldwide range, but it's only like six people, I think) will know any of the songs I'm going to mention, but it gives you something to check out on Youtube then, doesn't it?  So what's this record all about?  It's Death of Samantha getting together in 2011 to rehearse for some reunion shows.  This record is a recording of the rehearsal sessions, so these are new performances of old songs.  But they're live, so it gives a nice immediacy to everything.  There's plenty of crunchy guitars, David James on bass and Steve-O on drums are a really solid backbone and Gillard's guitars are fantastic.  Petkovic's lead vocal range is as limited as ever, but he knows what he can get away with, and he stays far, far away from where he doesn't belong.  What more could one ask from a Rock N' Roll band?

The songs here are all top notch.  I shoulda went to this show, cuz they were on the money, man!  We kick off with Coca-Cola and Licorice, complete with some clarinet strangling, and plenty of weird guitar playing.  It's a great song, and only one of many on this two record set.  I don't want to just start listing great songs, because you can just look up the track listing on AllMusic or something.  Savior City, Geisha Girl, Amphetamine - in a just and decent world these would be songs everyone knows.  They're certainly good enough.  It's a real bummer that we live in a world where Rosenberg Summer and Yellow Fever aren't talked about at least as much as what The Pixies have done.  don't think I'm all down on The Pixies or something, because I like them a lot.  If Memory Serves Us Well is just certainly as good as any albums they ever made.

The biggest omission the world is making is not think that Blood Creek is anything short of one of the coolest, best Rock songs ever recorded.  It's one of those songs I can listen to all day.  It's probably a good thing that I haven't got this in a digital form because I'd probably only listen to Blood Creek for a week.  It's just such a great riff, and it closes out four sides of great Rock N' Roll.  If you haven't heard these guys, it's not your fault, but you should really check them out.  If Memory Serves Us Well is a great place to start.

Since I bought mine new, it's obviously in good shape.  The pressing is nice and flat, there's a spot of distortion here and there, but I'm listening with headphones while I write this, and it's mostly dead quiet.  I can't recommend it enough.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory

I haven't decided what record to write about for this post.  But I'm working on it.  The thing I've been thinking about lately is exactly why do some people seem to think that it's important to have an extremely diversified collection of music.  I've heard some people say their tastes are eclectic, just because they have some Iron Maiden albums next to their Can albums and their Herb Alpert albums.  I'm not saying it's impossible to like very different types of music, but I just find it a little more unlikely than the internets would have us believe.  It's part of the whole critical listening process that us people in the collecting community are often so proud of mentioning.

Now, the idea behind critical listening is something I understand.  I realize that essentially it means that I'm making a decision that one piece of art (music's the only art I'm comfortable being critical about) is more worthwhile than another piece of art.  Obviously, other people will agree, while others disagree.  That's pretty much half the fun of interacting with other people that like the kind of art you're interested in.  I've got a nephew (nephew-in-law?) that doesn't collect music in any form.  We were someplace where we were listening to the radio in the background and a Stones song came on and I said, "Cool!  I love this song."

He said, "Yeah, this is pretty good."

I asked, "What kind of music do you like?"

He replies, "Oh, I like all music."

Now to me, this is the worst.  How can you genuinely like all music?  We talked about that a little, but I could tell that it's really just not important to him what music is playing.  We saw a band that played 90's hits, and he danced with his wife to all those songs, and they seemed to like the nostalgic aspect of those songs. Maybe those kinds of songs would be his "favorites," I'm not sure.  I'm not sure because I think he puts equal value to every song he hears.  Now, you can admire that if you want to, but I'm actually very glad I listen to music differently than he does.  I don't think The People on the Bus is as worthwhile to listen to as say, Magic Bus by The Who.  I understand that I'm not a four year old, and I understand that when I was four I thought The People on the Bus was a terrific song.  So is it a worthwhile song?  Yes, for children.  It's like a crayon.  A crayon is great to get a child interested in art, but as that child gets older, hopefully he sees that paint conveys more emotion than a crayon does.

I heard something by Florida Georgia Line the other day.  I did it on purpose, and I have to say, that was a mistake.  It was a mistake because I don't think all music is good.  I think some music is bad.  Listening to Florida Georgia Line was like huffing gasoline, or eating paste, or maybe listening to Rush Limbaugh.  I could feel myself getting dumber just listening to this.  Every second, I felt dumber.  I felt like I was wasting my time.  I'm a musical snob, for sure, but I can see the joys in a stupid song.  I love songs like Wooly Bully and Louie, Louie.  Some songs are just fun.  But some songs are mind numbingly stupid and sound like they've got paid product placements in them.  I mean, there was a time when a corporation wouldn't want anything to do with a song, but now it sounds like Ford, Chevy and Dodge are competing with Budweiser and Miller to get mentioned in some stupid song about looking at a teenage girl's tits.  Ugh.

Which got me to thinking about something that's almost universally loved (at least by people in my general age range), and I came up with Creedence Clearwater Revival.  In particular, Cosmo's Factory.  These guys had like a two year smash of a career.  They completely ruled the singles charts, and their albums were really solid.  The kinds of albums a real Rock Snob could get behind.  It kicks off with Ramble Tamble, which I suppose is kind of just a jam more than a real song, but it's a great way to start an album.  CCR sounds like an American band, and their brand of roots music isn't an act or a facade, these guys know why the guitars need to wail right here, and the drums need to pound right there.  CCR works in Cleveland as well as it works in Baton Rouge. They're the kind of band that just sounds like what we all want Rock N' Roll to sound like, no matter what part of the country we're from.

The thing with CCR is that they were a truly great singles band, and I know a lot of Rock Snobs scoff at that kind of success, but their albums, at least during the time when they were ruling the world, are even better than the singles.  I mean, Cosmo's Factory has five Top 5 singles.  Think about that.  Five Top 5 singles, and this isn't a Greatest Hits package.  Sure, that means you've heard Lookin' Out My Back Door and Up Around the Bend enough that they're burned into your psyche, but How great a world is it when Run through the Jungle is the kind of song that hits number 4?  The argument can certainly be made that it's a better one than we have now.  The thing is, the charts can have bands with good music on their albums, but for some reason we've decided we don't want that anymore.  I dunno.  If all albums were as solid as Cosmo's Factory, maybe I'd just like everything, too.  But all albums aren't even close.

My copy is a late 70's pressing.  I'm sure older pressings have more "bloom" or some other bullshit than mine does, but you can crank it up and hear a little of the passing of the years through my record, but I love the way it sounds, and I love the cool inner sleeve with their catalog on one side and their faces on the other.  It's a nice copy of a great record, by a great band.  There's not a bad second on it.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

So have you ever watched videos of people looking at their records?  You may think, "Rick, that sounds really fucking stupid."  You wouldn't be wrong, but what's the difference between someone making a video and showing you some new records they just got, or talking about some records they like and writing about their records in a blog?  Really, not that much when you come to think of it.  I started this project mainly just to make sure I keep writing things, using paragraphs, spelling words and generally not turning into one of those IT guys that can only spell or communicate in acronyms. So before you go giving these people a hard time, remember, they're just having some fun with their stuff and lets also remember that those of us that collect records have had some serious issues in the past:

Guys that collect records are notorious for not having girlfriends or wives.  Many of those that did have ended up choosing records over that life.  C'mon, you've met them so don't look at me like that.

Guys that collect records often have all the social skills of a ten year old with a new toy he doesn't want anyone else to touch.  They also often don't understand why people might not give a shit who Robert Ludwig is.  Or what a matrix number is.  Or any number of the little bits of minutiae that give record geeks a hard on.

Guys that collect records often have serious issues with body odor.  Every record show I've ever been to, some cat smells like he doesn't wipe his ass or bathe, and I'll be damned if that dude isn't always following me or just ahead of me.

So we shouldn't be throwing any stones near our incredibly fragile glass house, ya know?

Anyway, I was down a YouTube rabbit hole watching people show off their newest records and I had a pretty entertaining time of it, actually.  Especially with the kids.  The kids are teenagers or young adults, and it's really pretty cool to see just how excited they get about something like finding a Rolling Stones Let It Bleed album with the poster (and to be truthful I don't have one of those, so I'm a little jealous!).  You just go to YouTube and search on Vinyl Community and there's tons of stuff to sit and watch.  The common thread is that everyone is really into records, and the size of the collection doesn't matter.  You can have thirty or 30,000.  All you have to do is hold up your record and go back to kindergarten and do the whole Show and Tell thing.  I'm often very surprised at how much the kids know about Classic Rock and first pressings, label variations. One girl held up a Columbia Two Eye label and called it exactly that.  I didn't know anything about that kind of stuff until I was in my twenties.  I kind of wish the kids would listen to more new stuff, but maybe that will change as they make more money?  New records are expensive, but then again some of the old stuff they dig up isn't exactly cheap.  But I'm not gonna complain about kids listening to records.  Or showing them off on YouTube.  I think it's pretty cool, and they meet other people that like their records.  So good for them.

All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with the first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album.  I know I said Damn the Torpedoes was his masterpiece, and I stand by that, but man, I'll tell ya, when this came out in 1976 and I first heard it wherever it was I first heard it, I was really excited about these guys.  I mean this is kind of a scattershot album, but I have loved Breakdown since the day I first heard it, and I still love it. I remember my friend's dad that had a real, honest to goodness, badass stereo in his basement had a little Datsun B210.  That's the little car my friend always tried to get, because he had a killer Pioneer under dash stereo cassette and a bunch of Jensen Coaxials wherever he could fit them in.  Man, Breakdown would just shake the paint off that little car when my friend cranked it up!  That used to be a lot of fun!

I think this record got more play than it might have otherwise just because Breakdown and American Girl were just instant favorites for everyone.  I don't think the rest of the record really holds up to the standard set by those two songs, but Strangered in the Night, and Fooled Again (I Don't Like It) were just good enough to garner some airplay and keep the sides on turntables.  I don't think anyone thought Tom Petty would still be selling out anyplace he wants to this far into the game, but it really doesn't seem like that kind of success couldn't have happened to a nicer, harder working guy that knows how hard it is to make it in Rock N' Roll and also appreciates the history of the genre.  I mean, for me the guy gets into a sameness after Damn the Torpedoes that I'm just not interested in, but he was a new Classic Rocker at the time when it was starting to look like there might not be any of those anymore.  So that's pretty cool.

Well, that was a rambling, mostly incoherent little essay, but that's okay.  I tend to look at these like the kind of things I'd say if you were here listening to records with me and you couldn't figure out how to get a word in edgewise.  Not so much different than the YouTube people, is it?  Except I probably take up less of your time!   But back to my record - I've got an MCA Super Saver pressing, but it's really in great shape, and the vinyl is actually pretty heavy, flat and quiet.  If you're looking for this album, you should be able to get one of these for five bucks or less.  I had an earlier pressing long ago, but it had some issues that I think were related to the pressing plant not quite using enough vinyl to stamp the record.  The first song on both sides was really bad!  This one has been a nice replacement, though.  I hope I come across one of the YouTube kids listening to it and enjoying it.

Zappa/Beefheart/Mothers - Bongo Fury

Man, I have some strange, strange stuff on my record shelves.  I don't know where or when I got this.  In fact, I have several Zappa albums and I really only remember how three of them came into my possession. This one, with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart just doesn't seem like the kind of thing I'd expect me to have.  Yet here it is.  In terrific shape, even.  As I listen to this, I'm not sure I've ever played it before.  I doubt that, because I think I've played every record I own, because I think it's stupid to just hoard the damned things.  Records are for listening to, and I don't feel the need to save every record from the garbage pile, nor do I buy records I just think I should have.  I should have records that make me happy, and I shouldn't have records just because someone else thinks they're important.  So I'm kind of surprised this oddball thing is on my shelf.

It starts off with a live track with Captain Beefheart called Debra Kadabra.  I'm not exactly sure what the good Captain is on about, but he's on to something.  He's ranting over some kind of weird beats and guitar blasts. I can't imagine anyone ever walking around trying to hum these songs.  I mean, every time it gets a little melody or rhythm going, they completely change things up or Captain Beefheart howls about some new thing.  But then Frank starts riffing a little and we get into Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy, which is sort of what I expect from Frank.  It's got some odd time signatures in parts, but lyrically it's about a groupie.  FZ has done some of those songs better, and some worse.

The album is mostly live and part studio, and I kind of like how they just decided that that's the way it was going to be.  Why does a record have to be one or the other, or even live on one side and studio on the other?  It still works out to be a pretty weird, but pretty listenable blast of weirdness.  It came out in 1975, when I was 13.  I wonder what I'd have thought of this back then?  I know 13 year old me would have absolutely loved Advance Romance, because right now much older me is really getting into it.  I have no idea what the vocals are on about, but Frank tears some ass on his guitar, which is always a good thing.  It's a really long song and it's real weird, but the line, half an hour later she had frenched his fry is gong to have me chuckling to myself all night long.  I'm enjoying it.  Especially the stupid shit about cupcakes and muffins.  I'm assuming that we've morphed into Muffin Man, which has some more blistering guitars on it.  I think I'm all in on this one.

Mine had a promo sticker on it, but it fell off.  It didn't leave a mark, but I'll keep it in the record bag. There's a corner bump, but otherwise the cover is pretty nice.  The record sounds terrific.  It's flat, dead quiet and ya gotta love those old DiscReet labels.  I really wonder where I got this from.  I wonder if it was a gift, or one of those times where I bought a bunch of records and thought I had listened to everything, but I missed some (I've missed some great bands for years because I did that - more on that some other time).  I'm glad I dug this one out!

801 - Live

When I was a teenager I used to go to downtown Cleveland once in awhile for a special record shopping trip.  I bought what I thought were the weirdest and hardest to find titles back then after a ride on the RTA Rapid Transit (the rest of the world calls them trains) and then a few blocks of wandering around.  I always went by myself because I'm pretty insufferable to go record shopping with.  Depending on the size of the store, I may decide I need to flip through every single record to make sure I don't miss the one record I've been looking for for ten years.  Plus, I'll talk to the store employees, other customers and generally be hours later than I said I would.  Hey, it's as good as (or better) than going to the bar so far as I'm concerned, and I like the bar a lot!

So I think I was about fifteen when I got this.  I went down to one of the downtown stores and flipped through everything and I think this was just in the import section, which back them may or may not be sorted in any way, depending on the size of the section.  I don't remember this being in a huge import section, but I remember it being a nice, diverse section of the store.  I looked at the cover and I just loved the grainy shot of the headstock of the bass guitar and pretty much nothing else.  I knew that Phil Manzanera was the guitar player for Roxy Music, and especially when I was a kid that meant total Guitar Hero to be in a really cool band that was big in England but mostly unknown in the US.  Except here in Cleveland because WMMS championed Roxy Music before most other markets in the US.  So I figured I'd take a chance on this, because I knew that Eno was also involved in Roxy, but at the time I don't think I much appreciated what he brought to the table.  Anyway, the back cover had pictures of the guys playing and they looked like what I thought a jazz band would look like if they weren't all really old.  I always wanted to like jazz some day, so I thought this might be some kind of gateway record into that world for me.

So I rode home with it and read what little text there was on the cover over and over and just couldn't wait to hear my new record.  I didn't have The Beatles' Revolver album so I didn't know if Tomorrow Never Knows was some weird outtake song or what, but I couldn't wait to hear it.  I had heard Baby's on Fire a few times on the radio, and I wondered how that would come across live.  I figured I'd either flip my wig over this, or I'd hate it, and I figured the big money import price was an exciting gamble.

When I got home I listened to it, and the beginning of the first side is something that I just always hear in my head these days.  It's just really quiet and I'm sure the band is kind of just getting situated to start, but the opening of Lagrima has these two little notes on the keyboard that almost sound accidental, but they also remind me of a train whistle kind of far off in the middle of the night.  I love that sound.  We lived near enough to railroad tracks that we could hang out by them, but just far enough from the intersections that the horns didn't wake you up or anything.  I loved hearing them late at night when I was a kid, and I still love the rare times I actually hear a train in the distance these days, though trains hardly ever blow their horns anymore.

Lagrima segues into Tomorrow Never Knows, and the songs become a little more structured.  Trust me, they're all kind of weird, especially with Eno singing.  For awhile I thought maybe he left Roxy because he wanted to sing more, but I think that's just a leap of my teenage imagination.  He's pretty cool because he sort of talk-sings like Lou Reed did but he actually sings a little more.  The more this record played, the more I knew it was going to be one of my favorites forever.

The odd thing is, this really still is one of my favorite records.  It's one of the reasons I still buy records because I like the cover.  It's adventurous, it's musically tight as can be, and while it isn't a jazz album in any sense of the word, it's definitely not just some more of the same old choogle that I love so much.  I love the weird lyrics to Miss Shapiro.  I used to love playing their cover of You Really Got Me for my friends, especially after Devo's first album came out with its killer cover of Satisfaction.  I mean, this was what I thought sophisticated Rock Music was all about.  I thought I was unbelievably cool for having found it.

Then years later, when I found the CD (and gave my import vinyl record away), I took my purchase up to the cash register and the clerk says, "Wow!  I didn't know this came out on CD.  I love this album, it's a total classic."  I'm thinking, "Bullshit.  I'm the only person in the world that's ever heard this!"  So I enjoyed that for years and then the internet comes along and apparently this is a slightly above ground semi classic record. Huh.  Who'd a known?  It's a truly great record that I think I'll never get tired of.

So you're saying, "Hey, Rick.  You said you trade this away and have it on CD now, but I see a record up there at the top of the post!"  Well, I was in Ithaca last week for a day and I found a neato record store called Angry Mom that I can highly recommend to you.  I think this was seven bucks.  The cover looks a little loved, but it still had the original sleeve and it plays pretty damned nicely.  It's got someone else's clicks now and then, but I think they can become mine.  The record is nice and flat and the guy that rung me up said I'd like it, especially if I never heard it.  I told him I've owned a copy since like 1977, and he called me an "early adopter."  I asked if it was popular and he said he doesn't keep them in stock that long when he gets one, but they're kinda few and far between.  I liked the store a lot and bought several great things there. I hope I can go back some day.

Saxon - Strong Arm of the Law

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I used to be in my early twenties and I had a job that paid very little, and a wife and a kid.  It was the early 80's and I had always enjoyed the Punk Rock that I've mentioned here in previous posts, but I always had a fondness for hard, fast heavy rock that had nothing to do with Punks. Maybe it's growing up in the Midwest.  I dunno.  It's just that I've always liked the hard and heavy, but I kind of have my limits.  It's so easy to just laugh off heavy metal, especially the metal of the 80's, but there was some pretty kick ass stuff back then, and when my record spending allowance was incredibly meager, I managed to buy a few metal albums that I'll stand behind to this very day.  I have some that are less great than others, but then again, there's no accounting for taste, and I think if you've seen much of this blog you'd agree that hyperlinking the term there's no accounting for taste and using this blog as the link would get your point across quite effectively.

Anyway, back when I had to work all three shits in a week and often stood next to the same one or two people for twelve hours a day, we'd sit and talk about music and movies mostly, and we'd get pretty in depth and go on and on all day.  Metal wasn't a joke then.  I don't think the genre has aged well (have you seen That Metal Show?), and I think it's a young man's game (again, have you seen That Metal Show?  I think there are usually three females in the audience), and I think older men just look funny with their thinning, super long hair and weird, apocalyptic, demon-y and generally laughable lyrical subjects just come across more as kind of sad than kind of fun.  Maybe it's just me, but c'mon, when you're fifty I just don't believe you'd rather stir up some demonic trouble more than you'd rather just go home and have a beer and hang out with your wife.

Man, metal is tough for me to stay on track with!  So I was saying, way back in the 80's in Cleveland, we were one of the cities to get Z-Rock. It only lasted maybe a year, in like the mid 80's, but it was enough that in that period of time, Cleveland was pretty into metal, and so was I.  I was a lousy metalhead, though.  Just like I was a lousy Punk.  I never dressed right, and I never cared.  Some of the true powerhouse metal bands I essentially ignored, like Slayer or Venom.  I really liked this album by Saxon, though.

I still think there's a lot of good on this record.  It's not so much like a metal statement or anything, it's kind of like the direction I'd have expected a band like UFO to go.  It's harder and faster usually, but it's also just a really catchy album.  I still have no idea how old a sixth form student is in school, but I'm assuming like a high school senior, and Sixth Form Girls is a song about young girls in the proud tradition of The Standells' Dirty Water.  Sure it's ten times faster, but the girls still want to go out and party.  I like it.  It kind of reminds me of a less salacious Motorhead song.  I mean, there's not just a mindless, chunky riff with some screaming on these songs, like a lot of 80's metal wound up being.  Heavy Metal Thunder is another fast and furious one.  It's about getting ROCKED.  It's essentially an updated version of any song about Rock N' Roll and that's always cool by me.

Dumb as metal bands can often be, I thought Saxon did a decent job with a song about JFK's assassination on Dallas 1 PM.  It could have been really stupid and totally missed the point, but I think the music playing behind the broadcast we've all heard (at least if you're my age or older) is cool, and helps make a decent artistic statement.  Saxon may have looked like a dumb metal band, but they weren't.  They were a solid hard rock band, at least for a little while.  I had wished I knew the title track when I was in high school, because it was just the kind of song that everyone partying in a car would have been able to get behind, ya know?

My record is in great shape.  I think it only saw play on my old B&O turntable and my current Rega.  It's not an amazing audiophile recording, but it sounds good loud and the record is quiet and flat.  The cover is black and shiny, but when I look it up online it's usually white.  That's probably the import or the CD version. I'd bet you can get this really cheap, and even if you don't like heavy metal, I bet you'd end up liking this record.

King Tuff - Was Dead

There are times when I look at my records and I think they're all ancient and I feel like one of those guys that says there's been no good music recorded after whatever date, which always seems to coincide with when they got finished with school.  I think that's stupid, especially because half the time those people don't know anything about any music that came out before The Beatles.  So generally the only good music came out over maybe twenty years, and that's just stupid.  I'm not some major musical historian, and I'm not some kid that just from having friends hears all the latest stuff.  I don't know anything about whatever the Top 40 or Bro Country charts are doing, but I'm not that young anymore and now I spend my time looking for things that make me happy.  I don't care if it's a record from 1976 or 2014, but no matter what, I'm still gonna do what I've done as long as I can remember.  I'm gonna read reviews, I'm gonna talk to people and I'm gonna go to the record store and buy things because I like the covers.  I'm not going to keep buying the same records over and over, looking for some elusive pressing with more Pace, Rhythm and Timing or Bass Slam. I think that's just obnoxious, and I think that's really something more for people interested in their equipment more than the music (which is okay, it's just not for me).

All that certainly doesn't mean I don't like it when someone asks me what I'm listening to.  My wife does it now and then, but she usually says, "What are we listening to?" with some kind of a sneer or outright distaste.  Every now and then someone (including her) will actually come in from the other room and say, "What are you listening to?" and sit down and listen with me.  That makes me feel good.  Not because it really matters to me if other people really like what I like, but when it's a band that's actually out there working today, and the person listening is only 30 or so, then I think it's cool to turn them on to something that may be a scene they can actually be a part of (cuz face it, I'm not part of any scene unless that's the sitting in my house listening to records by myself scene).

So just the other day I was listening to King Tuff - Was Dead while my oldest son and one of his friends were here.  I was feeling like and old fart and wanted to listen to something I haven't heard since Jr. High, and I decided on King Tuff.  I bought this just because I liked the cover and the name of the band.  It turns out it's a reissue of a really limited 2008 record by a guy named Kyle Thomas.  I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't play everything on the record.  So what does that usually mean?  It usually means lets have fun and blast some guitars the way kids have done it since before The Beatles.  King Tuff is all guitars and garagey goodness.  There's guitar solo's galore, and absolutely nothing to bring you down on this record.  I think I was hoping it would bring the sun out, and looking out the window right now, while Ruthie Ruthie is blasting its killer riff, I think the sun is trying to come out, anyway.

I like this record because it's the kind of record that it's really hard to pick standout songs.  The whole album is fun from front to back.  It's pretty much pedal to the metal for the most part, but Stone Fox is a slower song, but it's still drenched in great electric guitars, and there's none of the boring acoustic instrumentation some bands on indie labels seem to use as their stock in trade, and it doesn't drown itself in distortion like some newer bands seem wont to do these days.  I mean, who cares how catchy your pop hooks are if I can't make them out through the distortion you're purposely putting in to the recording?  I'm okay with lo fi, and King Tuff is never going to be considered as a reference kind of recording, but it sounds good.  it sounds good and the music is fun.

Mine's still pretty new, so it kind of obviously looks and plays like a perfectly new record.  The Burger Records reissue is nice, thick vinyl and it comes with a pretty cool poster of Kyle sitting out in the woods. It's a nice package and it's a great record.  The kind of record that's so great the kid's friend came up, asked what it was and sat and listened to the whole record with me.  What else can you ask a record to do?