Cowe gonna Be Chopps
[1979] Pop perfection from 1979 baby! If your idea of heaven is soft rock somewhere between Drivers Seat and Baker Street hold on. Everything here is exactly the right place: That lovely 12 string, prominent melodic bass, cascading piano, understated or perhaps perfectly stated west coast harmonies and backing vocals and to top it all off a crisp and clear saxophone played by the guy who funnily…
[1993] A lo-fi slacker rock jam that's probably mostly forgotten these days. In 1993 before burning cds from your mates became a thing I had One Sock Missing on a TDK D90 blank cassette with Archers Of Loaf's Icky Mettle on the other side. A couple of years later I saw The Grifters support Jeff Buckley at The Palais in St Kilda which I guess is a notable gig because soon Jeff was dead and he…
[1995] Bringing you more classic misses from the 90s. From the raucous garage-y end of slacker rock comes this ultra scuzzy monster of a tune. A style much closer to ye olde noisey proto-punk groups like The Electric Eels than contemporaneous lo-fi acts such as Pavement. The greatest group you didn't know in the 90s. It's the dude from top 80s band Great Plains Ron House and with TJSA he put…
[1995] Bringing you all the underground misses of the 90s! The guitarist from St✮Johnny Tom Leonard had a solo side project called Luxurious Bags. Their little known cd Frayed Knots was a toppermost lo-fi psychedelic slacker noise pop jam. There's a gorgeous euphoric pop anthem hidden beneath the muffled lo-fi layers of hazy sound here. The 90s you never heard... it doesn't get any better.
St✮Johnny - I Hate Rock and Roll [1994] 90s 90s 90s! That grunge-gaze sound. A lot of people missed St✮Johnny at the time. I mean you'd already had Dinosaur Jr for ten years plus Swervedriver, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Pavement, Polvo et al. for a while so by the time these guys got signed to Geffen they got overlooked. However Bill Whitten had a way with a downbeat melody and in conjunction with…
[1974] This ain't no glitter litter despite how clichéd it may seem initially, they absolutely nail the genre in an undeniable manner for one of the great hard rockin glam non hits of the 70s. It's a teenage rebellion stomper. These guys were called Iron Virgin so... after two singles Scotland's very own answer to The Sweet vanished into obscurity. Yet since 2003 they keep turning up on glam…
[1974] Oddball intense circus music glam. Look out for sped up chipmunk ladies doing backing vocals in the insane chorus. That might not actually sound enticing but this is a little infectious gem of a non-hit and non-memory worth checking out. Glam number one in a parallel glam-universe.
[1975] Tuuuuune! Stellar glam rock power pop. Beats The Glitter Band's original version from the same year which was also excellent. I mean how could you go wrong, it's just a crackin' song innit. How this wasn't a number one smash in Britain and Australia and Canadia is beyond me. However it made the German top 40 reaching number 28. Surely a major inspiration for Lawrence's 90s group Denim.
[1974] The great glam rock white disco sound of The Glitter Band. What a toppermost beat: A real glittering toe tapper!.. they didn't even need Gary for. Also a tune. You gotta put this sucker through your hi-fi speakers and crank it up to 11. It's party time people!
[1968] Obscure moody and broody garage psych from another one and done group from Michigan You gotta love the intense mandolin and misanthropic sentiments delivered with tormented desperation by singer Bob Glese and those mournful dirge-y backing vocals... all in a pop song that coulda got played on the radio. You could imagine them playing this in a dusty saloon in a scene from a south of the…
[1973] In the great British tradition of singles not included on albums. Roxy Music's second single came out a month prior to their second LP For Your Pleasure but was not included on that record. It's crazy that such sonic weirdness dressed up as pop made the UK top 10 back in 73. It all begins with an outstanding intro with notable drummage then the tune floats along on a surreal electric…
[1979] Scuzzy Acid fried surreal space rock musique concrète. The soundtrack to your horrifying nightmares becoming reality. Chaotic junkyard psychedelic noise recorded by a couple of deranged cyber-punk sailors of the mind. The astonishing psycho-geographical sound of a lysergically altered brain. Far out man. Really though you need to listen to the Half Machine Lip Moves LP in its entirety in…
[1974] One of those songs that nobody ever says is one of the greatest but... What a sound! Everybody's favourite louche lounge lizard with one of the heaviest and most brazen guitar-centric things he ever did. The 'In' Crowd was an old 60s soul tune that Ferry rendered unrecognisable with this glorious racket. Also preempts Bowie's plastic soul period. Menacing bass, hard riffage, quicksilver…
[1973] Glam insanity. A delirious one of a kind psychedelic glitter scuzz jam. If you chucked David Essex, Neu, Hendrix and Glitter Band into a blender... The sort of thing you imagine Helios Creed and Damon Edge were probably into... I mean if you stripped the vocals off here it would resemble Alien Soundtracks/Half Machine Lip Moves era Chrome. For your next acid rock glam disco party.
[1973] Like Chicory Tip gone feral. An explosive stomper that's scuzzy to the core. Wired Up is a dynamite synth laden fuzz monster to soundtrack the havoc of a teenage riot or as someone said music to smash up telephone boxes to. How this didn't storm the charts I don't know. It'd be a few years before this sort of pop mayhem would catch on with the young folk.
[1981] I thought back in 1985 "Geez this dude from Mr Mister is pretty old. What's he been up to? Where's he been till now?" Forty years later I've finally found out the answer, he was the dude in Pages. Turns out two of the dudes from Mr Mister were in Pages. Pages were a soft rock duo, consisting of Richard Page and Steve George, who formed in LA in 1977. They did three LPs of soft rock with…
[1993] Hits and memories with the gold soundz of the 90s. The genius of a song like this was that despite being seemingly generic this was absolutely undeniable even in the face of the facts that we were coming to the end of slacker rock. Dinosaur Jr had been around for almost ten years, Pavement were about to reach saturation point, David Baker was departing Mercury Rev and the uncommercial…
[1977] I loved CHiPs when I was little, even had CHiPs pyjamas. Friday nights were the best. When CHiPs finished we then got ace replacements like Nightrider and the A-Team. This theme is much more way out than I remember. Crime-funk going wildly cosmic. Check it out.
[1994] More slacker anthems. Catchy singalong indie rock for wasting your days away. *Trigger warning: Music video contains wasted 90s slacker rockers smokin fags!
[1997] A lot of bands were doing Beach Boys influenced stuff in the 90s. The Moles, The Fauves, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Boo Radleys etc. etc. etc. It was all pretty enjoyable. This one was totally unexpected and beautiful. It's a forgotten song now but one of the best Brian Wilson tributes.
Water [1991] I've always been perplexed by Green Mind and some people's opinions of it since it came out. I mean surely we all thought it was pretty crap after the astonishingly exhilarating electrifying insanity of You're Living All Over Me and the masterfully crafted devastation of Bug 's mess of noisy slacker grunge and the sweet slacker-daisical vision of The Wagon single. Weren't we all…
[1990] One of their finest pure pop moments. Still sounding remarkably fresh today. This recording is an absolute anomaly for Dinosaur Jr. For one single only they were a five piece. Lou's gone but we've got Donna Dresch on bass, Don Fleming on guitars, J doing his thing and two drummers: Murph in one channel and Jay Spiegel in the other. The Wagon was later remixed by J Mascis with some parts…
Son Of Mustang Ford [1990] So I was still in high school when the first couple of Swervedriver EPs came out. These were Rage classics that we taped on VHS months before we could ever get our hands on the records. I mean we lived in the bush mate! This tune to me and my mates was just a grungier, more testosterone fuelled version of You Mad Me Realise . Which didn't make it any less great. I mean…
Never Lose That Feeling [1992] Back to the good ole days when I was twenty. Me and my mate Tony would stay up late, drink and smoke, when the girls had gone to bed, listening to all the new and groovy sounds on the cd player. I'd totally forgotten the epic grunge-gaze and kaleidoscopic sax-haze of Never Lose That Feeling/Never Learn . Alan Moulder sprinkles some magic at the mixing desk. What a…
[1975] Cult glammy power pop tune from forgotten or perhaps never remembered 70s Long Island group. The twerps from Milk'n'Cookies recorded some of the most astonishingly poxy vocals ever committed to vinyl. These scuzzy wimps of late-bubblegum had a way with a hook though and their themes of adolescent lust are universal, timeless and a whole lotta fun. You gotta love that they got funded to make…