Dinosaur Jr: Dinosaur

Dinosaur Jr: Dinosaur

1985

Jagjaguwar Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Forget the Swan  2. Cats in a Bowl  3. The Leper  4. Does it Float  5. Pointless  6. Repulsion  7. Gargoyle  8. Severed Lips  9. Mountain Man  10. Quest


I used to have this on cassette tape waaaay back in those grunge-filled days of the early 90's...But back then there was no "Jr"...The tape was just labeled "Dinosaur"...It looked like this...

I used to look at that tiny cover art and wonder what in the hell was going on...I can tell you, now that I own a 12x12 vinyl copy of it, I still don't know...The whole thing is so butt-ugly, yet beautiful...Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good way to describe a lot of Dinosaur Jr's music...

Later in the 90's, I bought a CD copy that seemed to have a permanently dusty jewel cast that weighed 10,000 lbs...Y'know what I'm talking about? The jewel cases that just weigh so much more than any other CD in your collection? Anyway, I went to do the post for this album last year and the CD was no longer in the case made of dwarf-star material...So I went to Zia Records to find a replacement CD and found a vinyl reissue instead...However, when I got home, I realized this version doesn't have "Bulbs of Passion" on it...Boooo!!! Hissss!!

Talk about a band figuring out their sound between their first and second album! Sheesh! This album is all over the place, but the follow-up "You're Living All Over Me" sets the formula so precisely they would never stray from it ever again...That's why I love this particular record and find it so intriguing...Sure, maybe only half of it is truly great, but it's a pretty fascinating look into 80's underground...You can hear sensitive jingle-jangle, raging hardcore, cowpunk, corrosive noise and whatever else those floppy-haired college kids were into circa '85...

I count three drop-dead classics: "Forget the Swan" which almost sounds like the Dino we know and love, but with a slightly more country-ish feel...You can also hear the spirits of both Neil Young and Greg Ginn in that ominous guitar line...Then there's the hardcore hoe-down "Cats in a Bowl" where the sound is pure Sebadoh and Meat Puppets...

 "Cats in a Bowl" gets my vote as the album's best track...Careening and catchy as fuck...Although "Repulsion" is right neck-in-neck with it...Now this is the song that points the way to the band's future...It's the only track on here that could appear on any of the band's subsequent albums without raising an eyebrow...And that chorus is a killer... I also think that if the airy "Severed Lips" was a smidge more memorable it might make the classic list....It has one of those brilliant J Mascis  melancholy-yet-speaker-cracking  guitar solos that I like so much...

Again, the rest of it is all over the place.You've got abrasive post-punk goth on "Pointless," lumpy ugliness on "The Leper" and sludge metal on "Mountain Man"...If you're a college rock sub-genre obsess-o, you'll love it...If you're a Dinosaur Jr fan, you'll probably find it hit and miss, but oh, those hits...

 Let's check out a song...Here's "Cats in a Bowl" Enjoy...

Dillinger 4: D4! The Bootleg (The BBC Sessions)

Dillinger 4: D4! The Bootleg (The BBC Sessions)

2010

Chickswithdickrecords

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1.  A Jingle For The Product  2. Folk Song  3. Gainesville  4.  D4 = Putting The "F" Back In "Art"

 A live bootleg of Dillinger 4 recorded for some radio show....The back cover is also ultra misleading, since it gives the impression that there's a lot more music on here than there actually is...Y'see, it  lists 25 tracks on the back cover, although if you look closely, there aren't any D4 songs listed...It's a bunch of song titles by Black Sabbath, Grateful Dead, etc...So if you're fucking stupid, you might mistake this as a massive collection of D4 covering a couple dozen tracks on a single album...And as much as I'd love to hear D4 tackle some Gary Numan or Slayer, we all know that's not going to happen...

 In reality, there are really only 4 songs, all on a single side with side two being blank...Two from "Situationist Comedy" and two from "Civil War." And there was really no need for the track listing to be so misleading, because this is actually a fucking great live EP...There's no audience or banter, being a live recording for a radio show or something, but this is a best case scenario as far as a live recording can go...Nice and fat and probably clearer than most studio Dillinger Four albums...There are no big surprises or changes to the arrangements or anything; they just perform the songs pretty much exactly like they were recorded...

Should you pay $15.00 for this? Uhmmm, fuck no. $10.00? Ehhhh....$7.00? Okay, if you're a super hardcore D4 fan 7 bucks is perfectly reasonable...It kicks a fair amount of ass, still $5.00 would be better...It really is a super nice bootleg...

I'd post a video, but none of these recordings are on youtube and I don't feel like putting them up there cos I'm sick of my account being suspended...So here's Black Sabbath...

...and the Grateful Dead...

...and Gary Numan...

...and Slayer...Enjoy...

Die Kreuzen: Big Bad Days/Gone Away (Acoustic) 7-inch

Die Kreuzen: Big Bad Days/Gone Away (Acoustic)

1991

Touch & Go Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Big Bad Days  2.Gone Away (Acoustic)


Oh man, more Kreuzen...I think I have to come to the conclusion these guys weren't very good...Maybe I'm listening to the wrong stuff, who knows...If they were a good band they wouldn't put bad shit out, so...

The A-Side reminds me of the kind of thing that hair metal bands started doing after grunge came out, but this was released slightly before grunge hit...So I guess if you're being extremely charitable you could call this slightly ahead of its time, but again, that's being extreeeeemely charitable...Still, I can't shake a distinctly Candlebox/I Mother Earth vibe...Churning, howling,  alt-metal balladry...Bleh, I forgot about this kind of music...

"Gone Away (Acoustic)" is a little better, I guess...It's more low key at least...Some nice acoustic guitar playing and quiet, low-crooned vocals...It sounds like the kind of thing a local band would toss on as the last track of their demo to demonstrate their "range"...It has a "this one's for the ladiesss..." feel...Super forgettable, but still tons better than the shrieking full-band version I just subjected myself too...I'm giving this song the "okay-ish" label...Yes, you can play open-mic night...How's that...

Here's "Gone Away (Acoustic)" by Die Kreuzen...Enjoy...

Die Kreuzen: Pink Flag/Land of Treason

 Die Kreuzen: Pink Flag/Land of Treason 7-inch

1990

Touch & Go Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Pink Flag  2. Land of Treason

I'm not especially familiar with this band...I remember reading a lot of reviews in old heavy metal magazines and as a result, Die Kreuzen had long been on my "to check out" list but I never really got around to it...Then one day I ran across a small pile of cheap Die Kreuzen 7-inches so I randomly grabbed a couple just to hear something different...

This is some mildly interesting stuff...I'd classify it as punk/metal but with a different metal-to-punk ratio than most bands of this ilk...To me, this is straight punk music with screeching heavy metal vocals...This isn't quite as apparent on the A-Side, which is pretty understated, straight-forward cover of Wire's trudging "Pink Flag...It just sounds like a slicker version with maybe a slightly metal-ish string-bend here and there, but near the end Dan Kubinski lets loose a Rob Halford style "WAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"  Still, if you can summon both Wire and Judas Priest in one song, then you're pretty much on my good side...

The B-Side however is much more perplexing...It's a cover of the Germs' proto-hardcore classic "Land of Treason" where again the instrumentation is faithful (blasting hardcore) but the vocalist gives the song the full Axl Rose treatment...I can't say I greatly enjoyed it, but I feel like it was important that I heard it, if that makes sense...If someone told me a hair-metal version of "Land of Treason" existed, I'd have to hear it, y'know?

Think of it as a curiosity and you might be somewhat entertained...As versions of "Pink Flag" or "Land of Treason" that you would choose over the original? Uhhh, no way...Ever!

Here's "Land of Treason" by Die Kreuzen

The Dictators: Live-New York, New York

The Dictators: Live-New York, New York

1998

ROIR Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1.  Next Big Thing  2. Science Gone Too Far  3. Weekend  4. Rock And Roll Made A Man Out Of Me  5. Two-Tub Man  6. Moon Upstairs  7. Loyola  8. What Goes On  9. New York New York  10. Search And Destroy  11. Borneo Jimmy  12. Minnesota Strip  13. Master Race Rock  14.
Baby Let's Twist  15. Faster And Louder




"New York, New York" is just a reissue of the 1981 live cassette "Fuck 'em if They Can't Take a Joke"...

I looked for this album for years...I first heard the song "Loyola" via a cover version that appeared on the Parasites "Compost" album...

And oh my God, did I fall in love with that song...It was just the most glorious power-pop track I'd ever heard! Since this particular Parasites album was mostly covers I looked at the credits to find out who wrote it and to my surprise the answer was the Dictators? At this point, I was only familiar with some of the "Go Girl Crazy!" tracks and I couldn't comprehend how those sarcastic brutes in the Dictators could have penned such a shimmering, beautiful masterpiece...But as I explored the Dictators' discography I discovered the song didn't appear on any of their studio albums...It originated from some live tape called "New York, New York"...Eventually I tracked down a CD copy at the local Zia records last year (after looking for a copy for...Oh, a decade)...

(Note: The Dictators did eventually release a studio version of "Loyola" as a B-Side to the 1996 single  "I Am Right"...

I believe this is probably the version the Parasites had in mind when they covered it...They seem to have taken the arrangement from this take and just kinda sped it up for their cover...Here, you can compare...

 

"Loyola" gets especially stuck in my head these days since I live by a street named Loyola, and everytime I ride past it I'm compelled to sing, "Loyolaaa...Loyolaaaa..." Oh, I believe the Dictators' 1996 recording of "Loyola" appears on 2008's "Everyday is Saturday" demos/outtakes CD...I haven't purchased a copy yet, so I can't 100% confirm the veracity of this, but I'll let you know as soon as I get a copy)

Now as for the "New York, New York" live album? This is really where we separate the men from the boys, Dictator-wise...The recording quality is a little rough and muffled since it was just a two-track recording and not yer standard airbrushed major label "live" recording...This shit is for real...And it's loads of fun. Probably one of the most fun live albums I own...It's simply the Dictators in a New York club, ripping through their hits, new tracks that never appeared on other albums and a bunch of great cover songs by Velvet Underground, the Stooges and Mott the Hoople...And Handsome Dick is a hoot onstage, as you probably could have pieced together from their studio albums which routinely featured the Handsome One's various wrestling-style taunts and monologue... 

 Even the liner notes are entertaining...Richard Meltzer writes a nice tribute to the band, pointing out they were the first band who were punk all the time (prior "proto-punk" grandfathers had some percentage of something else in their sound) and finally presenting this, their "reunion" show...The next set of notes finds Adny/Andy Shernoff refuting Richard Meltzer's claim this was a reunion and that the Dictators were above such lame moves and had never broken up, further bolstering Richard's band-as-wrestler analogy by it' sheer "Let me tell ya something..." tone...God Bless the Dictators...

Should you get this if you already own "Fuck 'em"? Yea, the bonus tracks include three of the band's best songs, and are clearer, better recordings than the original "Fuck 'em..." line-up...Plus it's not on cassette, so...

Alright, talk is cheap, let's listen to some Dictators...Here's "What Goes On" as covered by the Dictators (note, this is the only song from this album I could find on youtube, or else I would have posted one of their originals...Still, it's  a pretty decent take on the song)...Enjoy,,,,

 

The Dictators: Bloodbrothers

The Dictators: Bloodbrothers

1978

Elektra/Asylum Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Faster and Louder  2. Baby, Let's Twist  3. No Tomorrow  4. The Minnesota Strip  5. Stay with Me  6. I Stand Tall  7. Borneo Jimmy  8. What It Is  9. Slow Death




Yes! Faster and louder! That's all I ask for....Do I put this album on the same level as the widely acknowledged, untouchable classic "Go Girl Crazy"? Yes, I do. Why? Cos it rocks so much!!!  Sure, it doesn't have the conceptual genius of that album but concept shmoncept,  this rocks so much!!

They promote Handsome Dick Manitoba  to the role of  lead singer and pen some ultra-catchy, fun n' dirty hard rock. Think of arena rock, but the arena is in the worst neighborhood imaginable...Is it humanly possible to write a song catchier than "Stay With Me" or "Baby, Let's Twist"? I dunno..As far as I know, the answer is no...Candy coated brass knuckles is the best I can describe it...

And the whole thing is that good...The only misfire is "I Stand Tall" which has the dumbest patriotic/Broadway chorus I've ever heard...It sounds like an outtake for a damn Rocky soundtrack...Can't you just picture it?

 "I!!  Stand tall!! I!! Stand proud of what-I-am!!"

The sort of song that Survivor themselves would toss out...Too bad cos the lyrics are probably some of the most Dictator-y lyrics on here:

"Lots of pizza, ice cold coke,
Johnny Carson telling jokes,
And lots and lots of American g-g-g-girls..."

But whoo God! The rest of it rules...It rules so much that Danzig's ripped off "The Minnesota Strip" riff about a gazillion times...And I agree with his thieving ways cos it's such a great riff! I should give a shout out to Ross the Boss, btw...He's fucking great here, always huge and crunchy and his guitar solos are sleek and fluid...

Forgive his later, sword-swinging ways...He's so good on"Bloodbreathers"...Actually I shouldn't bust on Manowar...They were also great in their own homoerotic way...Manowar has provided me hours and hours of pure enjoyment over the years...

I personally think "Hail and Kill" should be the National Anthem...Into the rubbish bin ye go ol' Star Spangled Banner...Let's hold our hammers high! May your swords be wet like a young girl in her
prime!

Alright, I got off topic...What was I talking about? Oh yea!  "Bloodbrothers"...Buy it...

"But, but, amazon.com says it's out of stock!!"

Buy it!

"But, but, the CD costs $20.00!"

I don't wanna hear no more excuses from you! BUY IT!!! Or listen to it for free on youtube...Whatever...Just make sure you hear it...

Here's "Stay With Me" by the Dictators...Enjoy...

Dictators: Manifest Destiny

The Dictators: Manifest Destiny

1977

Asylum Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Exposed  2. Heartache  3. Sleepin' with the TV On  4. Disease  5. Hey Boys  6. Steppin' Out  7. Science Gone Too Far  8. Young, Fast, Scientific  9. Search & Destroy




Man, how do you follow up "Go Girl Crazy"? That album introduced an entirely new worldview to rock n' roll...The burger-eating, wrestling-watching, slob. It was bold, funny and catchy as hell. But in the meantime punk happened and suddenly a lot of bands were aping their caveman pose. And how funny would the joke be the second time around? Not to mention the album stiffed commercially. Their solution was to play it mostly straight...Play up the Arena Rock angle and hope the Foreigner fans weren't paying too close attention to the lyrics...

It pays off in places, in other places it doesn't...They're throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks...And I think in the end, the moments that work like crazy are when the band does a bubble-gum version of hard rock...Highlights like "Exposed," and the fan-fucking-tastic "Science Gone Too Far" sound like a smart-ass Kiss...BTW, I'm extremely fascinated by the mad scientist angle of "Science Gone Too Far" and "Young, Fast, Scientific." YES! Scientist Rock! A worthy conceptual conceit to follow up the low-brow lifestyle rock of "Go Girl Crazy"! They should have explored this thread more thoroughly since it makes for the two most memorable moments of the album...Oh yea, Handsome Dick Manitoba gets upgraded from hype man to co-lead vocalist, and he sounds great! Hoarse, sloppy but he nails every hook he's handed and his conversation with his psychiatrist at the beginning of the otherwise so-so "Disease" steals the show...

We also find out the Dictators weak spot...Ballads...To be honest the ballads are only tolerable because they're colored by your previous knowledge of the band and their worldview. The fact that they're coming from the same band that gave us "Master Race Rock" and "Two Tub Man" imbues them with a wise-assedness that may or may not actually be there..."Hey Boys" just sounds like a damn Queen song, but because it's coming from the Dictators, the line "So pass the beer while I shed a tear..." gains additional heft....And "Sleepin' With the TV On" is just overcooked Meatloaf balladry that's only amusing because you imagine Classy Freddy Blassie is what's flickering on that titular TV screen (it's not though...He's watching some old gangster flick or something)...

I'm also a little torn on the merit of their Stooges cover...I mean yea, it kicks ass but I can't help but think it's the sort of thing that should have been relegated to a live disc or something...Their cover of Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe?" Revelatory! But the Stooges? Yea, no shit these guys were influenced by the Stooges...It just seems overly obvious to me. Although I'm willing to bet "Search & Destroy" wasn't so ubiquitous back then. Maybe in 1977 it was an obscure or overlooked gem or something...I dunno...

So here's my track listing for the amazing "Manifest Destiny" EP:

1. Exposed
2.  Heartache
3. Steppin' Out
4.Science Gone Too Far
5. Young, Fast, Scientific


Stick to the hard rock stuff and you have a classic EP. A short and sweet warm up for "Bloodbrothers"...'

Here's "Science Gone Too Far" by the Dictators...Enjoy...