The Sticks "The Sticks"

Released this year on Upset the Rhythm, this is a raw semi-garage rock compilation. Pretty good, although after hearing it too many times seems to start fading away. It's that kind of record you must hear only once in a while [and you recognize it then how good it is].
This info about the band is on Upset the Rhythm's official website:

THE STICKS are a stripped down garage party band from Brighton. They bash drums, sway on the bass and claw at guitar - often swapping over instruments between songs live - and yelp with melodic abandon and delight. The Sticks were recently dubbed as 'semi-amateur', this may be true. With cheap, unreliable equipment they manage to tease out a cacophony of crashing drums and raucous guitar melodies.

The key elements of the trio's sound are undoubtedly drawn from the rudimentary ideas found in the more inept efforts of mid-sixties teen bands such as The Chimney Sweeps and The Keggs, as well as their modern day equivalents The Black Lips, The Coachwhips or The Hospitals, say.


So, let's talk about the album. It excells in garage tunes, instrumental parts and has over 20 tracks.
The track list is the following:
01 - On The Run
02 - Don't Sit On The Porch
03 - Radio Song
04 - On The Sea
05 - Bored!
06 - Pongs
07 - One & The Same
08 - Interim
09 - Earshot
10 - Nothing Song
11 - I'm Wrong
12 - Messing Around
13 - Slam Party
14 - Honkey Time
15 - Got Me
16 - Regal Like
17 - Live In A Town
18 - Night Of Pleasure
19 - Morning-King
20 - Giant Strides

Read more about the band on their myspace or you can start by this interview on the Fader.

[upcoming bands] Hocus Tocus

Somewhere in the blogosphere, they said Hocus Tocus sounded similar to Kylie Minogue's Loco-Motion... Forget it. Since when lo-fi indie that's somewhat similar to fellows Wavves, Lovvers and Times New Viking is similar to Kylie? The world still has to go through much stuff for that to succeed.
Hocus Tocus are a great emerging band. They are that kind of lo-fi band you seem to have heard before, but still inovative. I advise you to go to their myspace here.

Check this out:

[upcoming bands] Drum Eyes

Not quite an upcoming band, but a band that I think has been evolving a lot lately... Drum Eyes... Quite difficult to label. The band members currently are: Shige ∞ E-da San ∞ complitly dengerous ∞ Chris ∞ Kathy ∞ Alistair Crawley ∞ Tom Hanks (according to myspace). My bad, I don't how to decifer that so I'll say that it includes there DJ Scotch Egg, a drummer from Trencher [Liam], Eda from Boredoms and a girl from Comanechi.
Their music mixes 8bit with drums, heavily-distorted guitars. It's a unique mix, I'd say.
Check their myspace here or lastfm page here.

Here it's a video of Drum Eyes performing [courtesy of Last FM].

Big Black "Atomizer"

Big Black's career started around 1982. They didn't found much mainstream success, however they've influenced the early industrial rock scene and have been remarked as a "must" for any person who's into noise. Their use of provocative lyrics garnered much attention.
This album entitled "Atomizer" (which is their debut album), as received good reviews .Take this into consideration: All Music gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Their brutal slashing guitars and great use of drum machines were widely influencial. This album is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. I know this sounds awkward, but the singer's [Steve Albini] voice of Gray Matter's vocals.
The track list for this album is:

1. "Jordan, Minnesota"
2. "Passing Complexion"
3. "Big Money"
4. "Kerosene"
5. "Bad Houses"
6. "Fists of Love"
7. "Stinking Drunk"
8. "Bazooka Joe"
9. "Strange Things"
10. "Cables" (live)

My favourite ones are: "Passing Complexion", "Stinking Drunk", "Big Money" and also "Kerosene". The album's lenght is 37 minutes and 37 seconds. The whole album is really dense and has a lot of cohesion along the song's transitions. Some people who aren't into "noise" should think about this fact: this work has more thoughts behind than it seems.
You can get the album here too.

Below is "Passing Complexion":

[gig reviews] Drop Dead Festival (10th October 2008)

Almost one year ago, I watched some of my favourite lifetime gigs (until now, this is)- Drop Dead Festival. One of the best underground events in the whole world, this deathrock, post-punk, new wave, art punk, etc. This day of D.D.F., I got to see the following bands: Schwefelgelb (Germany), Grabba Grabba Tape (Spain), Din Glorious (USA), Kitchen and the Plastic Spoons (Sweden) and Sixteens (USA). This day of the festival was held at Santiago Alquimista, near Lisbon's São Jorge Castle.
I only got to see a small part of Schwefelgelb's gig, but it was really cool and gave me some insight of what this festival would be the rest of that night.
Then, Grabba Grabba Tape played: lots of vocoders, fast beats and good vibes.
Next were Din Glorious: by far, the best gig of that night. I didn't have any opportunity to hear their music before going to the festival, so it was kind of a colossal and traumatic surprise. Lots of 8bit sounds; a keytar with a fat rad guy; a freak singing and jumping around, getting at the same time free beers by the bar; a strange masked guy playing synths, coordinating sounds on a Mac and playing drums to exhaustion: these were Din Glorious, one of the best live shows I've seen to date. At some point, the keytarist cut his forehead and then started running to the crowd but slipped on a beer bottle and got hurt. Then the singer got naked somehow. It was pure chaos and pleasure for many people's ears.Songs like " Bork like a dork" made the room echo while everybody was screaming "bork, bork, bork!". Hypnotic beats, dashing sounds, after all it was a memorable epic gig, it's how I describe Din Glorious' performance.
Kitchen and the Plastic Spoons gig was also really good: they didn't play for like 20 years, since the 80's! So they were kind of rusty, although they rehearsed in Sweden, before coming to Lisbon.
Finally, Sixteens played. I only got to see like 10 minutes of the gig, before I had left the room. It seemed nice, mixing some perfomance on stage with the good dark electro music they produce, straight from San Francisco.
After that, which I didn't got to see, there were many people DJ'ing around, like Polina (D.D.F.'s organiser) and Daniel (Din Glorious' vocalist).
Drop Dead Festival's myspace can be accessed here. There are also some pics of this event on their myspace, right here.

You can see, if you want to, a video I've edited and filmed ot that day:

Gray Matter "Food for Thought/Take it Back"

One great punk band, Gray Matter didn't have much success. This info was extracted directly from their myspace: "Formed in the summer 1983 from the ashes of several Washington, D.C., area punk bands, Gray Matter's mix of melody and punk power helped key the 1984-1985 punk resurgence in the nation's capitol. Consisting of guitarist Mark Haggerty and drummer Dante Ferrando (both of controversial first wave Dischord band Iron Cross), guitarist and singer Jeff Turner (founder of WGNS cassette label and studio), and bassist Steve Niles, Gray Matter was inspired by British punk bands. The band rehearsed but rarely played out, and it wasn't until the summer of 1984 that they played their first important public gigs, finding alliance with bands like Rites of Spring and Beefeater."
You can also find some more information related with this band here, on Dischord Records.
This album, "Food for Thought" is their first album and probably their best work.
The track list is:
1."Retrospect"
2."Oscars Eyes"
3."Fill a Void"
4."Give me a Clue"
5."Gray Matter"
6."Caffeine Blues"
7."Crisis and Compromise"
8."Flash in Time"
9."Phobias"
10."I Am the Walrus"
11."Chutes and Ladders"
12."Burn no Bridges"
13."Walk the Line"
14."Take it Back"
15.4 "A.M."
16."Head"
17."Phobias"
18."The Spy"
19."Walk the Line"

My favourite tracks are "Burn no Bridges", "I am the Walrus" (Beatles cover), "Chutes and Ladders" and "Give me a Clue". Still, this album, when inserted into the punk scene, is marvelous, with great vocals and faithful to what I'd call a punk philosophy (somewhat nihilist, as it's always associated); there's energy to take and give, on this record.
Get the album here or here (if you don't apreciate that much rapidshare links and use more often mediafire).

You should also check Ali Boulala's skateboard part on the film "Sorry" from Flip Skateboards, that features the song "Burn no Bridges" (it was this part that got me into Gray Matter, some years ago).

Below is a video of my favourite song from this album, "Burn no Bridges".:

Public Image Limited "First Issue"

Sir Lydon's project after murdering Sex Pistols [although in the 21st century he has ressurected them] this album is filled with a nihilistic new wave / post-punk / weirdo spirit. In the 80's there weren't many bands similar to P.I.L.:John Lydon had once again found a new way to shock the UK.
Released in 1978 (by Virgin Records), this public attack record entitled "First Issue" has 8 tracks:
1.Theme (9:06)
2. Religion I (1:30)
3. Religion II (5:49)
4. Annalisa (6:07)
5. Public Image (3:01)
6. Low Life (3:39)
7. Attack (2:56)
8. Fodderstompf (7:46)

Songs like "Religion I" and "Religion II" mock any christian, verbally spitting straight at their face. Just examine these lyrics: "He takes the money / While you take the lie / This is Religion". Or take a look at these ones: "(...) And prey to the bitch / That spelled backwards is Dog". Musically, I prefer the following songs: "Theme", "Public Image" and "Fodderstompf".
Some critics have said P.I.L. were responsible for developing the post-rock movement (since their music changed -thanks to Lydon, once again - rock music upside down).
The album's lenght is 39 minutes and 54 seconds. All Music rated it with 4 out of 5 stars.
You can get the album here.

The following video is a live version (in Tokyo, 1983, I guess) of the song "Religion I":

Death in June "The Guilty have no Past"

Death in June is probably one of the most important bands of the neofolk genre, a sub-genre of the more famous Industrial movement. Founded in the 80s by Douglas Pierce, which had previously a punk band called "Crisis" (draining its sound to a mix between the extreme right political movements and the post-punk music). This previous band evolved to a more melancholic, but still (as we hear in this album) which post-punk influences. Take into consideration that this album collects songs since 1983 to 1993 and almost all of them are from their early performances.
You can download the album here.

This is the 4th song from their album:

New York Gong "About Time"

Daevid Allen decided to go to New York in 1979 and moreover he formed New York Gong: his "Gong" band influenced with punk and psychedelia, a mix he did with influences of the CBGB scene.
The text written next to these words was taken from the booklet that's included in this CD:
"Arriving in New York, he [Daevid] was greeted there by a new world that focused around the CBGB's, the epicentre of post-punk artiness. Emotionally fragile, unsure of where he fitted in, Daevid found this unobtrusive collective of artists, actors and freeform musicians welcoming. It was a creative hotspot where anyone on the fringes of artistic society fitted in, and a perfect place for Daevid to rekindle, and update, his Gong mythology.
Old time cohort and manager Giorgio Gomelsky was running a rather strange and beguiling event in New York called The Zu Manifestival. Daevid, sensing a minor revolution, got involved. It was through this assortment of odd-ball jazzers and free spirits that Daevid met Bill Laswell (...).
Together, Maher, Laswell and Beinhorn became the axis of Gomelsky's all-purpose Zu Band, backing up Daevid Allen at the Zu Manifestival and embarking on a ten-city tour. Even at this stage, the Material-to-be group was already playing musical chairs. As well as playing together at the Zu Band, Laswell played with the other three groups on the tour, Maher with two and Beinhorn with one another. (...)
The result of the riotous amalgamation of Allen-goes-Stateside was the 1979 album "About Time". Reflecting their chaotic live performances, it's an odd hybrid of psychedelia ("Preface"), new wave ("I am a Freud") and punk ("Much too old"), with a lyrical sentiment reminiscent of early-'70s Gong ("Jungle Window"). The album opens with an effects-laden recording of Allen reciting his "trippy" poetry. Some of the compositions, like "I Am a Freud," bleed quickly rhythms and melodies resembling the work of the League of Gentlemen and Talking Heads whilst "Materialism"and "Strong Woman" feature Allen's glissando guitar, which sounds pretty much a forerunner to the sound Fripp and Belew were to employ on their early-'80s King Crimson Projects. "Materialism", penned by Laswell, is the album's standout track, with its dominating bass relentlessly driving home to the groove.
Daevid stayed in New York for another year, experimenting with cut ups, electronic music and performance art, all of which culminated in his 'Divided Alien Playbax' album and its accompanying live shoes. Throughout this period he revelled in uncommercial creativity, heightened by his sense of the absurd and anti-capitalist politics and succesfully avoided becoming an ageing hippy."
These excerpts let us have a good vision of how New York Gong was formed and what it actually is. I haven't listened to Gong actually, so I can't compare them with New York Gong.
However, I admire this "About Time" album, which is quite fine and is original in its own way.

If you want to download the album click here or click over the cover.

Next follows a link to one of their songs on this album (although it's not my favourite, you should hear it before downloading the album):

TSOL - TRUE SOUNDS OF LIBERTY

From the album "Dance with me", I personally pick the song "Tired of life wich I came across while having a few drinks with some friends in a punk-rock hole in London near a bar called the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street around 2005. I had to know the name of the band, TSOL they said, for TSOL I looked for , and True Sounds Of Liberty I found.

The story goes like this , Drummer Todd Barnes guitarist Ron Emory, bassist Mike Roche, and vocalist Jack Grisham (who has been credited as Jack Greggors, Alex Morgan, Jack Ladoga, Jim Woo and James DeLauge) were four kids who grew up together in Huntington Beach, the band´s name TSOL –True Sounds of Liberty. Formed in 1979 and hailing from Long Beach, California, TSOL originated as a hardcore punk band, developing from earlier bands Johnny Coathanger and the Abortions and Vicious Circle.
This is one of the original California hardcore punk bands, mixed punk goth, glokm & doom, and ghoul rock.
They remained a favorite to many punk rockers in the Orange County scene, constantly switching labels, and Jack, the original lead singer constantly switching his name.
The band's first release was a harshly political eponymous EP featuring tracks such as "Superficial Love," "World War III" and "Abolish Government."
After their debut EP, they released Dance With Me, their first full-length record. A departure from the entirely political nature of the previous release, "Dance With Me" was far darker and more macabre, featuring such themes as necrophilia, and the song "Silent Scream," which is made up entirely of horror movie clichés. Their most popular release, both then and to this day, the album earned them the title of the "West Coast Misfits" (a reference to Glenn Danzig's band on the East Coast), and has made the band a favorite amongst horror punk fans.

There were obvious reasons why TSOL was so huge so fast: They were cuter, their songs were catchier and their live show was a lot more energetic and fun then any other band going. They single handedly initiated the influx of girls into the early 80’s punk scene. With songs about fucking the dead, “Code Blue” and gothic punk ballads like “Silent Scream”, they became the first punk “phenomenon”; it was the “OC Invasion”.
TSOL was linked in the minds of many OC hardcore fans to the Cuckoo's Nest, a nightclub in Costa Mesa that shared a parking lot with an "urban cowboy" club during that feather-hat cowboy pop culture craze with other punk bands like Social Distortion and the Vandals.

They later signed to independent label Alternative Tentacles, for which they released the "Weathered Statues" 7" extended play and the Beneath the Shadows album which featured, for the first time, keyboard player Greg Kuehn who added a new dimension to the band. Around this period their style had switched further, moving towards a highly experimental and varied one which featured art punk and psychedelic leanings, as well as their customary horror themes. Fans of the time backlashed tremendously against this change, and when on tour, the band was harshly heckled for their change in music. Today Beneath the Shadows is acclaimed by fans and critics as an achievement in art punk and new wave experimentation, and while Dance With Me remains the favorite release for most people, it is Beneath the Shadows which makes TSOL more than just another hardcore band.^{[citation needed]}

The band became friends with Guns N' Roses and TSOL t-shirts can be seen in the GNR video for "Sweet Child o' Mine". They followed up with an album in a similar style, titled Hit and Run. Before it was released, original guitarist Ron Emory quit the band, leaving Mike Roche as the sole original member.

TSOL were joined briefly by guitarist Scotty Phillips, who quit before the band started recording the follow-up to Hit and Run, they eventually hired guitar player and actor Marshall Rohner. They released a blues-metal album titled Strange Love in 1990. Mike Roche quit shortly before the album release, leaving no original member in the band. A compilation album entitled Hell and Back Together 1984-1990 was issued in 1992 with an emphasis on their metal era. Murphy Karges, later of Sugar Ray, briefly replaced Roche on bass as did Dave Mello.

Beneath the Shadows (Alternative Tentacles), the band’s second full length LP, showed just how much the band had rapidly matured. It wasn’t a breakaway from their previous releases; it was a progression. The band added keyboards and the arrangements became more complex and stylized, it made one think that the London Symphony might be touring with them in the future. As other bands of their genre fumbled around “into the unknown”, TSOL forged a new sound, one that didn’t turn fans away, but made them even more numerous and rabid. But with their enormous popularity, and their first tours, the foundation began to crack. Excessiveness and things that go along with “bigness” forced changes, including the departure of Jack and Todd, leaving behind a band that was well on the way, to instead regressing to a more primitive punk sound that quickly stagnated and alienated fans.

Today, 10 years since it’s last “reunion”, the band is back to give us what they gave then. “Superficial Love”, “80 Times”, “Code Blue”, “Wash Away” and the rest of those vintage punk nuggets will be blasted live into our faces again. Those who were not around to witness TSOL in their heyday can finally see for themselves why the band spawned a generation of bands and changed the shape of music today.

In November of 2002 there was a shooting on stage at the House of Blues in Hollywood Ca while TSOL was playing on stage. TSOL was pulled into the mess because they were the band playing on stage at the time. Now, over two years later, while the two guys who were shot walked away with 2 million each, TSOL was stuck with a $14,000.00 attorney bill.

Punk’s Not Dead is a new documentary film that features T.S.O.L. in a who’s who of faces and music from the punk world from 1976 to the present. It may be the biggest film ever made about punk, set to be released on the 30th anniversary of the movement. More information as I get it, but you can check them out on the internet, Punk's Not Dead.
I really am sorry for such a brief article, but, I really am short in time, and as a first post let´s keep it this way so you people may find the rest by yourselves, the way I did, and what a pleasant and wicked journey it was.

References : http://www.truesoundsofliberty.com/online.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSOL

And many thanks to a few friends of mine in London and Amsterdam for introducing me to this band.