Corrosion of Conformity: Eye for an Eye/Six Songs With Mike Singing
1984
Candlelight Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. Tell Me 2. Minds Are Controlled 3. Indifferent 4. Broken Will 5. Rabid Dogs 6. L.S. 7. Rednekkk 8. Coexist 9. Excluded 10. Dark Thoughts 11. Poison Planet 12. What? 13. Negative Outlook 14. Positive Outlook 15. No Drunk 16. College Town 17. Not Safe 18. Eye For An Eye 19. Nothing's Gonna Change 20. Green Manalishi 21. Eye for an Eye 22. Center of the World 23. Citizen 24. Not for Me 25. What? 26. Negative Outlook
I actually grew up with the thrashier, metallier early 90's C.O.C albums like "Blind" and "Deliverance" without being fully aware of how much more ass these guys used to kick...
This shit is outta control with nary a trace of the Pepper Keenan era groove...Full on hardcore that distinguishes itself from the rest of the loud/fast pack with a thicker, sludgier feel and garage-band fidelity...It falls more on the punk spectrum as far as 80's crossover goes, but they're not afraid to add a little Sabbath to the breakdowns...
Eric Eycke might not be the most colorful vocalist in hardcore history or anything, but he sounds suitably frazzled, barking out lyrics in a hoarse grunt while the band kicks up a cloud of dust behind him...Just try and read along to the lyric sheet on songs like "No Drunk."
Individual songs don't matter much, it's all about the rush, but a few do rise their ugly heads above their others...The title track has a...gulp...catchy chorus if your ears are attuned to hardcore punk, and "What?" is packed with nifty riffs...
They also toss in a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "The Green Manalishi," although I think it's safe to say they're covering Judas Priest's cover of it, which probably gives a pretty good indication of where their heads were at...
Let's check out "Eye for an Eye" (with Eric Eckye singing) by Corrosion of Conformity...Eat it...
I have the 2012 reissue that includes the "Six Songs With Mike Singing" ep, where the band switches vocalists (which would end up becoming a regular occurrence with these guys)...
It's hard to say if Mike Dean (the band's bassist) is an improvement or not...His style is less guttural and more screamy than Eric's. Honestly both sound fine to me, although listening back to this again, I might give the edge to Mike, mainly because he's the one that sings "Not For Me." Hot damn, that song rips...
One thing's for sure. the band does tighten things up musically on this EP. Even though most of the songs are repeats, the feel is different enough to keep them interesting...
So yea, give this a shot if you've worn out your Black Flag records...It's fun as hell to flail around to...Hell, I might even break some furniture... Let's check out "Not For Me" by Corrosion of Conformity (with Mike singing...) Drink it...
Track Listing: 1. From the Inside 2. Wish I Were Born in Beverly Hills 3. The Quiet Room 4. Nurse Rozetta 5. Millie and Billie 6. Serious 7. How You Gonna See Me Now 8. For Veronica's Sake 9. Jackknife Johnny 10. Inmates (We're All Crazy)
One of my fondest memories growing up,,,
I went to my Grandma Davy's house one idyllic summer day in the mid 80's...She would always go to Florida every winter and then return in the summer. During the summer she would have kids stay at the house to watch over it and in return the kids got a free party pad away from their Parents for the winter...Anyway, the kids that had watched the house that winter left behind a huge record collection. My Grandma had attempted to contact the kids to come back and collect their belongings, but for some reason or another they never did, so she told me and my younger Brother that we could keep whatever ones we wanted!
This was too good to be true. We returned home with an armload of vinyl, with our head's buzzing...Among the finds were....
Kiss: Rock & Roll Over
Kiss: Alive!
Billy Joel: Glass Houses
Queen: Flash Gordon Soundtrack
Alice Cooper: From the Inside
...and about a bazillion more that I can't remember offhand...Anyway, I spent the entire summer spinning those albums non-stop...
One that I left behind that's never left my mind, was some album by Dr Hook... I remember reading the lyric sheet and coming across the line, "Hot Dogs turn me on..." which I found deeply disturbing for some reason...To this day I wonder what in the hell that song could possibly be all about...Waitaminute, we live in the internet age where any song in existence is only a mouse-click away.....I'm finally going to listen to this Doctor Hook song that's haunted me for all these years (who the hell is Dr Hook, anyway?)...
Turns out the song was "The Turn On" from the 1982 album"Players in the Dark."...Let's check it out...
(Oh man, am I happy I left this one behind! What kind of shit is this?!?!?! I was sure I was remembering it wrong, but no, hot dogs clearly turn him on...So do tacos apparently...Such sleazy medallion yacht-sex music...It's almost awe-inspiring in a way....?)
Anyway, like I was saying, I spent the summer totally immersed in those recordings and "From the Inside" in particular. For starters, this record has some of the greatest album packaging I've ever seen... The front cover shows Alice's face superimposed over a set of doors that open to reveal...
The inside of the asylum and all its inhabitants, like Nurse Rozetta, Old Silky, etc (as outlined in the song lyrics), This room also includes another little door labeled "Quiet Room" that you can open up to see Alice sitting in a rubber room...
The back cover is another set of doors...
That you can open up to let the inmates out...
I can't imagine owning this on any other format than Vinyl...Even if you're not into Alice, I'd recommend this for the cover alone, so much fun...People often ask me "Why don't you get out of the past and just download the MP3's?" My only response is to show them this cover and if they still don't get it, then you and I have nothing to talk about so, nyahhh!
For all the theatricality of the album artwork, the album is one of his most personal and grounded albums...You're just as likely to hear tender power ballads as you are snarling, vicious rock...
Surprisingly the album is based on a real-life experience...Right around this time Vincent (aka Alice) had an alcohol-fueled nervous breakdown and ended up in a Sanitarium...When he was released he teamed up with Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin and wrote an album based on his experiences there and the other inmates he met in the facility...
That's why you get character portraits like "Millie and Billie" where Alice improbably teams up with the bubbly Kiki Dee and sings lyrics like:
"...And I liked your late husband Donald
But such torture his memory brings
All sliced up and sealed tight in baggies
Guess love makes you do funny things..."
Ooookay, on the flip side of the hatchet, we get the touching "How You Gonna See Me Now" based on a letter he wrote to his wife while institutionalized...
There's some outstanding stuff here though, if I had to choose my absolute favorite Alice song, the easy answer is "Serious." It's a balls-out pop rocker with Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen on guitar, and it's the type of hooky rocker that would fit right in on "Heaven Tonight" or "Dream Police." Once I hear this song, it tends to overtake my mind for the rest of the day...
"Nurse Rozetta" is a winner too...Nice and sleazy and the section where he sings, "Nurse Rozetta, iI won't let her catch me looking down her sweater," is catchy as hell...
The song that initially drew me into the album though is the grand finale, "Inmates (We're All Crazy), which falls somewhere between a Disney musical and the Psycho theme. Alice rasps antisocial lyrics like, "It's not like we're vicious or gone, we just dug up the graves where your relatives lay in old forest lawn..." over an orchestral backing...Now this is the Alice you were probably looking for...
Oh yea, Marvel also produced a comic book based on this album...
...Maybe soon we'll get a regular, ongoing series based on Lindsay Lohan's endless rehab stints...
Dense and challenging but with a few too many ballads...This is a bit of a grower, rather than a shower, so it's probably not the best place to start if you're just getting into Alice Cooper, despite the fact this was the Alice Cooper album I started with...
Well, it's about time to get out of here...Here's "Serious" by Alice Cooper...Enjoy...
Track Listing: 1. Mr. & Misdemeanor 2. Shoe Salesman 3. Still No Air 4. Below Your Means 5. Return of the Spiders 6. Laughing at Me 7. Refrigerator Heaven 8. Beautiful Flyaway 9. Lay Down and Die, Goodbye
It's weird...Out of all the musicians that were so vital in shaping my longtime love of rock music as a kid, Alice Cooper is the one I probably listen to the least now...I don't really know why...I always enjoy it when it's on and it has all the right ingredients, but for some reason I only own a couple of his records now...Maybe I find his discography daunting at this point, maybe it's the lingering stench of hair metal from the "Trash" days, who knows...I didn't start the Friday Night Record Party to answer questions...I started it to give me something to do at the computer besides wanking it to pron all day...
Wankity wank wank...
The reason I fell so deeply in love with Alice Cooper 100% originates from the 1986 videocassette release "Alice: Cooper the Nightmare Returns"...
This thing blew my head off the hinges when I first saw it back in the 80's...I was a weird kid who always loved horror movies and other morbid shit, so this was manna from heaven for me...Among the indelible images that stuck with me for a lifetime...Alice impaling a cameraman with a mic-stand, Alice getting his head chopped off in a guillotine, Alice wiping his ass with money, and last but certainly not least, Alice building a robot and then fighting it...
Hard not to love...
So I was a humongous Alice fan growing up...I thought I had heard it all, but one day in the early 90's, my friend Cory brought me this weird, old Alice Cooper cd with a bright red cover called "Easy Action."
"Refrigerator Heaven"? What the hell was this? I borrowed it for about a month, played it about a zillion times and returned it, proclaiming it was one of the coolest things I've ever heard and decided it was the best Alice Cooper album...Then I didn't hear it again for about 20 years...
I was at FYE a year or so ago and saw a vinyl copy of "Easy Action" in the used record bin for just a few bucks, so I was happy to relieve them of it...I couldn't remember a lot about it, other than I had once liked it...
Listening back to it, I think I may have overstated its stature as a "great" album...It's certainly good and it's beyond great at times, but it has its problems...
The biggest problem boils down to two songs, really...Unfortunately those two songs take up over a third of the album..."Below Your Means" starts off promising enough with a moody, dry psychedelic first section that's within spitting distance of prime Alice, but regrettably gets bogged down in one of the most boring long jams I've ever heard...It doesn't help that it fades out over two full minutes (with about a minute of it almost inaudible)...Drying Paint Rock...
"Lay Down and Die, Goodbye" sounds a little more interesting to my ears, but it's even longer and probably more likely to drive the average listener out of their mind...This time it's not so much a jam as 7 and a half minutes of random noises and feedback...Or "filler" as it's more commonly known...
Without those two (loooong) songs, they would have been left with an ep, but what a killer EP!!
The remainder is a very interesting album that's worth a listen to any die-hard Alice Cooper fan, and to oddball music enthusiasts in particular...I find this period of their work the most interesting, because it's not just hard rock or ballads, there's a whole wide, weird world of grimy and mind-bending music here, from English music hall to freak-wad noise-rock...There are also some excellent rockers that foreshadow "Love it to Death," most
notably the cryogenic blues-rock of "Refrigerator Heaven," but to me, the album's real strength lies in the pair of fluffy soft-rockers...
"Shoe Salesman" is maybe one of my favorite songs by the
band...Whimsical, Beatlesqe country rock with a creepy, blood-freezing
undercurrent...Sort of a cross between "Rubber Soul" and a heroin
withdrawal nightmare...Also in this vein, is "Beautuful Flyaway" which
is a dead-ringer for "Face to Face" era Kinks, which always a good thing
for me...Happy, plastered, music hall that's notable for not being sung
by Vince Furnier...Instead guitarist Michael Bruce takes the mic, and
does a wonderful job...It's probably worth a mention that Michael went on to be the lead singer for the short lived Alice Cooper Band reunion "Battle Axe" by the Billion Dollar Babies...
Actually, it's not worth mentioning at all, I just wanted to post that cool album cover...
Anyway, think of "Easy Action" as a mighty fine EP by Alice Cooper, with two lousy bonus tracks at the end of each side, and you'll enjoy this (if hard art-rock is your thing)...
Anyway, let's check out "Shoe Salesman" by Alice Cooper...Enjoy...
Track Listing: 1. Baba O'Riley (The Who) 2. Sister Disco (The Who) 3. Behind Blue Eyes (The Who) 4. See Me, Feel Me (The Who) 5. The Wait (The Pretenders) 6. Precious (The Pretenders) 7. Tattooed Love Boys (The Pretenders) 8. The Imposter (Elvis Costello & the Attractions 9. Crawling from the Wreckage (Rockpile) 10. Little Sister (Rockpile with Robert Plant) 11. Now I'm Here (Queen) 12. Armagideon Time (The Clash) 13. Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick (Ian Dury & the Blcokheads) 14. Monkey Man (The Specials) 15. Got to Get You into My Life (Wings) 16. Every Night (Wings) 17. Coming Up (Wings) 18. Lucille (Rockestra) 19. Let it Be (Rockestra) 20. Rockestra Theme (Rockestra)
I picked this up at FYE...I had no idea what it was but my eyes popped out of my head when I saw who was on it..A good number of these bands rank among my all-time favorites, and it only cost 3 bucks, so I figured it would be a safe bet...
I failed both history and especially geography, so I wasn't especially sure what Kampuchea was...Actually, I still don't really know...Let me look it up...
Oh yea! Pol Pot! Screw that guy! What an evil asshole...I think I'll draw all over his face spitefully...
There! Now I feel a little better...Now that I look at the record again, there is an explanation of the cause on the inside gatefold, but I usually avoid looking at it because...God, there's no way to talk about this without sounding incredibly shallow, but here goes...I hate looking at pictures of starving children while I have one hand in a bag of Doritos and a beer in the other..It makes me feel helpless and guilty...Alright, I said it! Let's get down to the record...
I kinda wish the ratios were a little better on this...Some bands only get one song while others get an entire side to themselves...Let's break this sucka down side by side...
Side One:
This one is all Who...Don't get me wrong, I love the Who, but I kinda wish Rockpile or the Specials would have gotten an entire side instead...Mainly because there's already a million live Who records out there...And besides, this is Kenney Jones era Who...I might be singing a different tune if this was prime Keith Moon Who...Really, I like Kenney Jones just fine...I always liked this era when they would play the songs off their later albums...They seem more at home on them for some reason. As a result "Sister Disco" is the most interesting thing for me here, despite its dissonant beginning (or maybe because of its dissonant beginning....I like dissonance!).
Side Two:
See this is what I mean by the ratios being off...I'm sure everybody on Planet Earth would disagree with me, but I would have much rather had one Pretenders songs and three Elvis Costello songs instead of vice-versa...It freakin' kills me to listen to the Attractions rip through a blazing version of "The Imposter" and then it's over...Again, the Pretenders are fine and all, but c'mon...
...Hey, waitasecond...I think I just heard the Pretenders toss off a Howard the Duck reference in "Precious"...
Alright...They've earned their three songs....
It's cool that we at least get two Rockpile songs. Their take on "Crawling Through the Wreckage" is a rollicking good time, but to be totally honest I don't especially care that much about the Robert Plant guest spot on "Little Sister." I know he's more famous than everybody else so blah, blah, blah, but I would have rather had another Dave Edmunds or Nick Lowe vocal...Maybe some "Teacher Teacher" or "A Knife and a Fork" or something... Not exactly sure what their setlist was that night, so...
Side Three:
This is probably my favorite side...Each band only gets one song, but what bands and what songs!
It starts a little rough for me...A lot of people can't understand this, but I'm not a very big Queen fan. Even though I greatly admire his mustache, I find Freddie Mercury's vocals to be a little too "musical theater" for my tastes... I do find their imagery and camp sense of humor somewhat appealing though, and I do have a tremendous nostalgic connection to their Flash Gordon soundtrack...
That said, it's weird that Queen only gets one song...From what I remember Queen was just as big as the Who and Paul McCartney back then...Then again they might have only been that popular in my household...I didn't exactly have my finger on the pulse of the nation back in 1981...I was too busy watching Captain Kangaroo...
...but at least they get a long song, with an extended crowd solo...
To me, this side is all about the other three bands...We get scorchers from the Clash, the Specials and Ian Dury and the Blockheads!
I can remember seeing Ian Dury and the Blockheads for the first time on an old videotape I bought back in the 90's called "British Rock: The Legends of Punk & New Wave" that I used to watch non-stop all the time...
I'll never forget watching Ian walk out, all stiff gait and grimy suit, with a voice that sounded like he smoked every cigarette in existence, barking out "HIT ME WIFF YOUR RHYTHM STICK!" Oh yea, I remember also being blown away that their sax player played two saxes at the same time...Damn!
They do "Hit me With Your Rhythm Stick" here, too...Kind of smooth and disco-y except for Ian's gruff shout (but of course I love it for exactly that gruff shout)...Anyway, side three is where it's at, Dad...
Side Four:
This is the Paul McCartney side...Three songs with Wings and three with Rockestra...After alright-ish versions of "Got to Get You Into My Life" and "Every Night" we get to the real highlight of this side...I love "Coming Up" so much, and this is my favorite version...Whenever I put this on I'm forced to put on my boogie shoes...Impossibly upbeat, funky, stiff-disco and a simple and effective chorus...Yes, yes, yes...
The other three songs feature Paul fronting a 20-man band consisting of about a gazillion other superstars, most of whom appear earlier on the record (Pete Townsend, Kenney Jones, Bruce Thomas, etc)...The Rockestra photo inside the album cover never fails to crack me up...13 guitarists on stage staring at one another...
The experiment is mostly useful for proving that your ears can only distinguish between so many instruments at one time...If I didn't see the pictures I would have probably guessed there's about 8 musicians playing....I bet it was awesome to see, though...However, I do feel a little gypped that Ian Dury doesn't get to do lead vocals on "Let It Be." Now that would have been a night to remember...
So, if you find yourself digging through the crates at your local used record store and run across the "Concerts for the People of Kampuchea," I'd check it out for sure...There's a ton of great music and the entire thing is a hell of a good time. It's hard to believe they've never released this on CD...Tell me an extended version with 15 or so discs featuring the complete sets (and an extra disc with the movie) wouldn't rock your world...So get it on, Atlantic records (or whoever owns the rights) and make it happen...Do I have to think of everything around here?
Track Listing: 1. Classics of Love 2. Castaways 3. Signal Signal 4. Carry On 5. Rise or Fall 6. True Rulers 7. Conscious Burning 8. On Broadway 9. Heatseekers 10. A Place Where We Can Stay 11. Walk Down the River 12. Rough Redemption 13. Deep Spring 14. Angels at Play 15. Dixie Roadrash
I love Kamen Rider!!
I also love Common Rider!!
And why wouldn't I? It was Jesse Michaels' first new release since the demise of Ska-Punk legends Operation Ivy...
...and the short lived Big Rig...
I remember there being a lot of anticipation in the punk scene for the Common Rider album...After all it had been 5 years since Big Rig, and that was only a 7-inch, which means he hadn't released a full length album since Op Ivy's one-and-only album, 1989's "Energy." I pretty much ordered every album Panic Button/Lookout! released, so there was certainly no way I was going to miss this one...
After the usual excruciating three week wait, I finally got that package in the mail! Here it was at long last...
Three-Hole Sally!!!!
...and then about a week after that I got my Common Rider Cd...
Popping it into my ten foot tall 6 Disc Changer CD Player/Dual Cassette High Speed Dubbing Stereo, I heard that acoustic strum and Jesse's flat toast:
"At one, I was sitting and thinking of all the
beautiful things he could have become,
Instead of a lyrical oracle and I'm a most appreciative one,
'cause I'm in a world of my own
when I'm into it I don't want anything else,
and nothing can bother me when I'm inside of it
cause I'm outside of myself..."
Wait! This wasn't gritty ska-punk! Still, it was undeniably awesome...There was no way this was going to live up to the anticipation, I knew that...And what's here is very fine indeedy...Lots of boppy pop rock with sunshiny choruses with a little reggae here and a few acoustic ditties there...I whittled away countless hours during that summer of '99, driving around while blaring the sweet sounds of "Walk Down the River" and "Classics of Love." God, I used to play the hell out of the wistful, Buddy Holly-esque "Deep Spring."
Really the only song on here that I've never warmed to is "Angels at Play." Although a lot of the album has a welcome, good time feel, this one has a chorus that seems to take the joyfulness a step too far, into the realm of a forced smile, if that makes sense...
Still, it's a small hiccup, and all in all I find the unguarded optimism very charming. Oh yea, I should mention the band on this contains Dan Lumley and Mass Giorgini of Squirtgun/Screeching Weasel fame...
I haven't listened to Squirtgun in at least a decade and a half now, but I used to play them pretty regularly...I still listen to Screeching Weasel all the time, though...I almost forgot I worked with Mass Giorgini once...He did the mastering on our cover of "Peppermint Girl" that we did for the "God Save the Queers" tribute album...
Here's the inside cover...You can see our little TA-80 robot logo in the lower right hand corner...We pretty much worked via email, so I don't have any great insight into the guy's character or anything...All I can say is that his emails were firm, yet masculine...Never had the heart to tell him the song had already been mastered by our friend Randy, so it ended up getting mastered twice, which resulted in a loud-ass "CLICK!" during the intro...Oh my God, I'm seriously laughing so hard thinking back on all this stuff...I didn't care though, cos I desperately wanted Mass' name on one of our recordings. After all, his name was all over the old albums I had loved, so it was worth it...And getting to see the TA-80 logo next to the iconic logos of all of my old faves (Screeching Weasel, the Nobodys, New Bomb Turks, and the Parasites) was a real thrill...This was also where I was introduced to Johnny Love and his amazing bandLe Volume Était Au Maximum, who's mastered every TA-80 album since...Oh yea, it also forced me to remember the band The Hard-Ons and the "Dickcheese" album that I used to own...
Wow, did I ever get off subject today...I better start this post over....
...ahem...
Common Rider: Last Wave Rockers
1999
Lookout! Records/Panic Button
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track
Listing: 1. Classics of Love 2. Castaways 3. Signal Signal 4. Carry
On 5. Rise or Fall 6. True Rulers 7. Conscious Burning 8. On
Broadway 9. Heatseekers 10. A Place Where We Can Stay 11. Walk Down
the River 12. Rough Redemption 13. Deep Spring 14. Angels at Play
15. Dixie Roadrash
Track Listing: 1. Life, Death & Saturday Night 2. Know Regrets 3. Robert Poss (American Guitar Hero) 4. Big Disappointment 5. Filthy Underthings 6.
Superfriendlier 7. Mudpie 8. Denny's In The Bun 9. Attrition 10. Wrecked 11. Don't Mess With No Glue, You Don't Get None, On Yr Hands 12. Richard In A Treestand 13. Stagnation 14. Lila 15. Angelfood 16. The Rock Narcotic 17. Mudpie Reprise
I first heard this years ago when my friend Joe bought it, I believe, based on the album cover alone. I don't blame him! It is an excellent album cover...I mean, it has not one, but two Lemurs, and Elvis with a poodle head!
I can remember us listening to it at the time and thinking, "Goddamn, Joe really lucked out, this album is awesome!" It made the rounds and we all played the shit out of it...I probably eventually sold my copy in college to buy Ramen or something and kinda forgot all about it....
A few years ago, apropos of nothing, I suddenly remembered the band, and wanted to hear it again, so I turned to youtube, but surprisingly couldn't find anything... I kept my eyes peeled whenever I was at the used record store, but never saw it until today when I was at the Zia records outlet... The Zia records has recently opened a freakin' huge store on Mill Avenue & Southern, and they turned the previous University & Maple location into a "Discount Outlet Store." I wasn't exactly sure what that meant until I went in there today and saw that's it's essentially a $0.99 CD store...The guy working there said they basically shipped away all the stuff nobody will buy at the other Zia locations and put it all into one store and are selling it all for cheap...
The store resembles a sort of Compact Disc graveyard...Hundreds of thousands of Boomerang Original Motion Picture Soundtracks....
...and unloved SWV discs...
...and a cornucopia of corporate/alternative 90's acts with one word names like Dink, Chick, Stick, Smile and Shampoo...
So yea, not many hidden gems in this place, but I did find a Peter Tosh disc I was looking for and oh my God, a copy of "The History of American Rock and Roll" by Combine, which I guess would be another example of a one word 90's band (one word band names were to the 1990's what three word band names were to the 2000's) ...
I really had a blast listening to this Combine disc again...It's in the same vein as bands like Superchunk or Seaweed...Not quite pop-punk, not quite grunge, etc...I also hear the more melodic side of Fugazi in some of these songs...And boy, are a lot of these songs catchy...I probably hadn't heard "Know Regrets" or "Big Disappointment" in 15 years, but that didn't stop me from singing along to every big-ass hook like I had just heard it yesterday....
Apparently the album is based on a book I never read (in other words, a book that isn't "TV Guide") called "Rock and the Pop Narcotic"...
Now this is a real-deal album, with an overarching concept (the history of American rock n' roll, of course), and songs that flow seamlessly into one another, resulting in a whole that's bigger than the sum of its parts...Not that there's anything wrong with the sum of its parts, mind you...
Just about every song is noisy, hooky and exciting...Lots of clanging guitars, feedback and adenoidal singing, best heard on the anguished meltdown "Wrecked" and scrappy album opener "Know Regrets." They do slow things down on the acoustic ballad, "Mudpie" which sounds like Smashing Pumpkins without all the pretension...
I wonder whatever happened to these guys...This is one of the better "forgotten albums" that I've heard and I'm utterly mystified why Combine was so overlooked. If you're hungering for the good ol' days of Archers of Loaf and Superchunk then I can't recommend this enough...It's totally gonna make your year...
As I was saying earlier, there's zero Combine on youtube, so I took it upon myself to upload some...Hopefully they won't term my account...They weren't too fond of my "Beatles Years" radio show videos that I posted earlier in this year for the Beatles posts... So here's "Know Regrets" by Combine...Enjoy...
