Soap The Stamps: A mini documentary about late 80's UK Hardcore

"A look at the musical noise explosion that was British hardcore, the punk-inspired sound, following the obsessive fans and musicians who turned the rural satellites and drab suburbs of the UK on their heads."

HDQ

So a channel in England has been running a short documentary series about the "glory days of the UK's best underground music scenes over the last 25 years, featuring key artists." I can't say I'm too interested in most of them, but when the Stupids posted a message on Facebook about a hardcore episode, I took notice.

Unfortunately, it seems that you can only stream the show here if you live in England.

However, some kind soul posted a TVrip of it in DVD format. It's a big file, and a private site, so I've converted it to a smaller avi file for your viewing pleasure. Thanks a lot to the original uploader. I don't want to name names since I don't trust "the man" when it comes to download sites.

I actually haven't watched it yet, so I hope my converted file quality is decent. I'm waiting for a spare moment to really savor it. I think the Stupids are featured prominently (if it was just about them, I'd be fine with that), but hopefully it mentions some of my other favorites from that time period, like HDQ, Visions Of Change, Exit Condition, Jailcell Recipes or Bad Dress Sense.

And here's a supplemental article including an interview with the documentary's main subject, James Sherry, and a photo gallery from the period:
http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/19636/1/what-we-wore-hardcore

Music Nation Episode 4: Soap The Stamps.avi (340mb or streaming)

Almost 14 Million Views!

I guess that means you might have already seen this, but if you haven't, I apologize to your ears.

Descendents - Still Hungry: Enjoy Sessions 85-86 (Cleaned Up)

While I'm procrastinating on my Best Of 2013 list, I'll share this gem with you.

My favorite Descendents album is Enjoy! It may have the worst production and it has 2 songs dedicated to farts (not exactly a minus IMO), but it also has some of the best proto pop punk ever recorded. I also happen to prefer Ray Cooper's guitar playing and having future Dag Nasty bassist, Doug Carrion, onboard doesn't hurt either. It seems like they had so much fun on this album, between recording farts, blasting out songs like "Kids" and "Hurtin' Crue" and the funny vocal wails they'd do to mimic screaming guitars.

In the mid 90's, a bootleg 7" called "I Don't Want To Get Bootlegged" began turning up in shops. I remember buying it at Earwaves, playing it when I got home and thinking, "Holy shit! This is now my favorite Descendents record!" The 3 unreleased songs were amazing. They were harder than any previous Descendents songs, more in line with "Hurtin' Crue." And "Green" (titled "Red" on the 7") sounded beefier as well. For some reason, that song sounds a little quieter than the rest of the Enjoy! album. I started putting a song or 2 from that 7" on every mix tape I made from then on. Those 10 year old (at the time) rough demo songs still blew away most of the other current pop punk songs I was adding to those tapes. I've never understood why they haven't seen an official release, but I'm sure SST has something to do with it.

Eventually the full (or is there more?) Enjoy! session became available on this bootleg CD, including demos of 8 songs plus a live set from San Diego in 1985. I've omitted the live tracks since I really just care about the studio songs, and apparently there's a better sounding version floating around the internet. I've taken out the background hiss and remastered it a bit to boost the volume. There are a few places where the volume drops out, but this is still a great sounding bootleg and this is the best version you're likely to find. I've also corrected the unreleased song titles (named Song 1-3 on the 7" and incorrectly on the CD). According to Discogs, Milo provided the correct titles for a magazine at some point.

Enjoy!

01) Shattered Milo

02) Wendy

03) Promise

04) Kids On Coffee

05) Enjoy

06) Green

07) Sour Grapes

08) Vidi, Vici, Veni

Descendents - Still Hungry: Enjoy Sessions 85-86 (R) (vbr 0)

The Good Natured - More Skeletons

Are my album covers getting worse?

If you listened to punk/alternative through the 90's, you probably know the evils of major labels. They were like a plague, infiltrating one scene or genre, flooding the music market with soundalike bands, then moving on when the next big thing came along. Not that the lazy, mindless and fickle public doesn't bare some responsibility for subduing to any trend that comes along though.

A lot of bands I liked fell victim to punk's major label "heyday." Some bands received no promotion because of label firings/"restructuring" (Sweet Baby), some bands went into debt, some broke up (Jawbreaker), some had their albums shelved (Sense Field), some changed styles (Shades Apart, Weston) and some were allowed to continue making horrible music (The Offspring).

Should I come to my point? The biggest musical heartbreak must be losing rights to your album and not getting to release it. That's the case with The Good Natured. I'd been looking forward to their debut album Prism to come out sometime this year, but a Facebook message a little while ago stated that they had been dropped by their label, which was also retaining rights to their album, and not releasing it. The band might have also lost the rights to their own name (!), but I'm not positive about that. Could this have something to do with the fact that Katy Perry was releasing an album entitled Prism this year too? I wouldn't put it past those fatcats.

If you're not familiar with the band, imagine the Cars with a fantastic female singer, with a cool English accent to boot! Although I love electro/indie pop in theory, a lot of bands just don't really do it for me. Bloc Party for example, not a big fan. But I'm a sucker for keyboards and a catchy harmony, which the Good Natured have plenty of. And a Waitresses cover from a singer in her early 20's? She obviously has good taste for a youngin'.

Unfortunately they've only left us with a smattering of EPs so far, most of which I've compiled here. They have at least 2 earlier EPs, but I don't think they really hit their stride until Skeleton. Plus I couldn't find them in matching MP3 bitrates, and I'm anal like that.

However, their last Facebook message mentions that they are "coming back stronger than ever next year in a new shape and form." Looking forward to that. In the meantime, prepare to dance around the room singing into a hairbrush.

Skeleton ep (2011)
   01) Your Body Is A Machine
   02) Skeleton
   03) Wolves
   04) Be My Animal
   05) Prisoner
   06) The Hourglass
   07) Skeleton (Nfiftyfive Remix)
Christmas Wrapping Ep (2012)
   08) Christmas Wrapping (The Waitresses)
Adrian Lux Album (2012)
   09) Alive (Adrian Lux Feat. The Good Natured) (Original Mix)
Video Voyeur Ep (2012)
   10) Video Voyeur
5-Ht Ep (2013)
   11) 5-Ht
   12) She Drives Me Crazy (Fine Young Cannibals)

Update 6/4/2014: Unfortunately I had to take down the download link. Thanks for asking me first! Luckily the band has reformed as Lovestarrs. Hopefully the unreleased Good Natured album sees the light of day eventually. I guess that would be antithetical to current record industry practices though.

The Pizza Underground

Macauley Culkin's...Pizza Themed...Velvet Underground...Cover Band

Update 1/6/2014: Their bandcamp page seems to be gone, maybe for the moment. In the meantime:

http://thepizzaunderground.tumblr.com
https://soundcloud.com/thepizzaunderground

Future Of The Left - Man Vs. Melody (Self Released, 2012)

I'll add this one right quick. Here's one of those examples of a release being brickwalled, but only mastered to about 50% peak volume, so I just raised it to full dynamic range.

Mclusky were one of my favorite bands when they were around. Luckily I got to see them twice in San Francisco and they were awesome both times. Mclusky Do Dallas was arguably their best release, with a mix of classic indie rock, noise rock, humor and anger.

When they broke up, the singer formed Future Of The Left and the bassist formed Shooting At Unarmed Men. At first, neither struck me as being as good as their former band. I lost track of Shooting At Unarmed Men and Future Of The Left's prolific output proved more daunting than exciting. But lately I've been revisiting all of the Future Of The Left releases and enjoying them a lot. I think Mclusky had the sound a little more finely honed, but Future Of The Left seems freer to explore a little more, producing some great results.

This EP is as good an introduction to the band as any, with abrasive dirges, jangly rock and Andy Falkous' caustic lyrics and delivery. And of course, some of the best song titles ever.

01) The Real Meaning Of Christmas

02) Future Child Embarrassment Matrix

03) Johnny Borrell Afterlife

04) He Is Not A Hymn

05) Hometapingiskillingsusan

Future Of The Left - Man Vs. Melody (R) (vbr 0)

Remasters

If you've downloaded some of my stuff, you may have noticed that some of the albums have a comment "Remastered By Neal." I've started to "remaster" some of my old stuff that's either really quiet, to match the volume of albums by the same band, or if I'm making a compilation of B-Sides. 

A lot of audiophiles will tell you that the record industry practice of remastering albums is bullshit. I tend to agree. It's just getting you to buy the same album that you already have. If it has been remixed, has bonus tracks added or new liner notes, I understand getting the new version. But remastering is basically just making the album louder, and done so rampantly now to keep up with the loudness wars.

To show you an example, here is the original CD version of Slayer's "War Ensemble" from Seasons In The Abyss:

That's what most older punk or metal songs look like digitally. There are spikes for loud drums, guitar solos or yells and dips for the quieter parts. The sound waves can't go above or below 1 db or else there's clipping of the sound and there can be audio distortion. I think the Dinosaur Jr. remasters are guilty of that.

Here's the remastered version of War Ensemble:

To achieve that new loudness, peaks are clipped and compressed and then the rest of the sound is raised up to 1 db or close to it. This isn't even that bad for a lot of metal remasters. Most of the Century Media remasters (Exodus, Forbidden, Nuclear Assault) are totally brickwalled, meaning there are few spikes or dips, everything is just loud across the board. There's no magic to this process, no talent (I can attest to that) and no real improvement, besides VOLUME!

Now audiophiles will talk about the loss of dynamics and the subtleties of the music. There's where I don't really care. I listen to a lot of old punk and metal. It wasn't recorded very well and probably sounds like shit to a lot of soundologists (that's a word, right?). But I like music for the songs and how it was represented when it was made. It's like with movies for me: I don't care that much about special effects or mind watching avi movie files on a computer screen. I just care how Scott Baio gets back at those jerks with his telekinetic powers and that Scatman Crothers has a weed induced dream about a salami bazooka.

Basically, I have a lot of free time, I enjoy the process and a lot of old stuff is a lot quieter than the first Slayer example above. Plus I listen to music on headphones a lot more now and get annoyed at all the volume differences between stuff. I've gotten it pretty streamlined now. Some old albums only peak at .75 db, so raising them up to 1 is a distinct change that adds volume without removing any of the music. Sometimes it takes a little more work to match the volume of a band's discography across different record labels and eras.

So, if you ever see one of my download links with an (R) after it (like Slammin' Watusis or Lovejunk), that means I've gently remastered it. Don't worry, nothing like the 2nd Slayer example above. I think Dischord has done a good job with their remasters and I've tried not to be much more aggressive that that. In a few cases I've tried to equalize the albums a little if they don't sound that great to me. The original SNFU - Better Than A Stick In The Eye CD was incredibly quiet and muddy, so I remastered and boosted the treble a little in that case and think it sounds way better.

A lot of the stuff I've remastered for myself is in print however, so I'm hesitant to post it. But if people are interested, I'll find a way to share it so you can compare it with the originals.