Punk Me? Punk You! – Featuring the Burndowns and Baseball Furies

Neither of these albums are new.  One of the bands doesn't even exist anymore.  But both came in with a recent shipment of stuff from our good friend over at Big Neck Records, the home of one of my favorite garage otufits of all time, Seger Liberation Army.  Needless to say, I tore into these with abandon.

And I’m still tearing . . .

The Burndowns – S/T

An absolute frenetic, frantic, and fantastic fury of primal methamphetamine fucked up punk rock.  Burndowns are a chemical amalgamation of the basal abandon of hardcore with some solid straight up, post-70’s punk attitude.  Songs burn-out in a smoky tailspin after two minutes of non-stop, adrenaline-surging guitar rage and drum punishment.  Perhaps it’s the slight touch of Oi! Style punk that rides through the back bone of this one that elevates it above the heap.  It’s something, because Burndowns have produced one of the more scorching punk albums I’ve heard in while.

I could go into each song, but to be honest, there’s no need.  At near breakneck pace, they pass so quickly it’s kinda hard to tell where one starts and the other ends.  An entire side of this album passes faster than a bloated guitar solo in some noodling-ass prog band.  But this I can say, amongst the volume and guttural velocity, Burndowns know how to write a song.  Great, catchy choruses punched into the air with gangland vocals, make this one an instant ear catcher.  Primitive guitar solos fire through the pounding chaos of accelerating punk abandon.  Vocals are appropriately gruff, but not hardcore.  Raspy, throaty, but clean enough that you can even hear what he’s singing about.  If you care, that’s a good thing.

“Where You Been,” is a blur of guitar chaos and choruses.  “Out of My Head,” passes by even faster.  “Tell Me Why,” is a pounding terror, the drummer punishing his skins as if he was beating the face of a Las Vegas gambler who owed him money.  Dig the tone on the guitar solo and the Oi! Vibe.  Strong work.  “Nothing Better to Do,” rounds out side one and maybe the best song on the side.  Kicking off with a slightly cleaner, fuzzed garage tone, the boys lay straight into a true-on singable, memorable chorus and gangland vocal hook.  You want punk, you got.  One big splenic vent of bile. Reminds me of The Bones.  Love it.

Buy form Big Neck Records.  It's only $8

Baseball Furies – Throw Them to the Lions

This other treat from Big Neck Records blew me away.  I got a thing for bands that can properly combine the discord and spittle of punk with the chunky, bass-massive darkness of post-punk.  Bands like The Estranged and more recently The Beautiful Mothers have hit it square.  Now that’s a perfect description of this release from Baseball Furies. 

I’m not a long-time fan.  Never heard of these guys before.  My sole association with baseball furies are the 10” action figures on my bookcase modeled after the characters in the Warriors movie.  So I got no reference to compare these guys to their prior releases which I understand are grinding, primitive garage punk and roll.  I also understand that Throw Them to the Lions was the Furies parting shot.  Their last ride off into the sunset.  And all I can say about that is, too fucking bad.

Cause what I’m hearing right now should be damn proof positive to any fan of near-putrid, garage-y post punk that Baseball Furies were only skimming the surface of what they could do.  This is one glorious bastard of an album.  Bringing in a boozy post-Replacements sensibility to their bass-thumping grime and rock.  The Furies stopped just short of what undoubtedly would’ve been a masterpiece for their next album.  Each song here is a visceral attack of angular, throbbing, guitar agitations that hit you like a soccer kick to the crotch. 

“Blood on my Hands,” kicks us off with a scratch of guitar that builds like a TSOL missive.  When the bass kicks in it packs enough power to dissolve your liver.  Propulsive, subversive, mean.  Oh yeah.  The darkness that’s draped over this song could almost be like some lost Bat Cave shit from the ‘80’s.  “Are You Going to Point Your Gun at Me?” picks up the pace and the agitation factor with epileptic spasms of guitar like Gang of Four on uppers.  A huge post-eighties vibe runs through this, scraped up, thrown into an oily can, tossed into the back of the garage and allowed to fester and ferment for months.  Nearly rabid bass playing propels this beauty with the intensity of a snared animal about to gnaw off it’s own leg to escape from a trap.

Then “Don’t Leave this Place,” leaks out sounding like the best Replacements outtake I’d never heard.  Either that or some ugly step-brother to the Hoodoo Gurus.  The pace is slowed, the bass brought way up front, the vocals assured.  A true sing-along post-punk anthem.  “Cultural Dump,” ends side one riding the Iggy wave like a fetid surfer on a sea of sludge.

Plus the whole thing comes on some of the coolest clear vinyl I’ve seen.  If the names I mentioned trigger a little hormone release from your pleasure center, buy this.

--Racer

Get it from Big Neck.  It's worth the $12

The Single Life – 7” of Fun: Featuring Hirax, Heavy Water Experiments, and The Fitt

Hirax – Blasted in Bangkok

Having just written about Hirax’s 2004 release, The New Age of Terror, I was inspired to find the piece of music from my youth that actually turned me onto the band in the first place. A few search functions later, I found myself on eBay and within mere minutes, I was paying a king’s ransom for Hirax’s 1987 7” demo, Blasted in Bangkok. But, it was worth every penny. You see, I picked this disc up around ’88 or so, played it forward, backward, sideways, upside down . . . basically, the songs became a piece of my being and I remember being sprawled out on my bed vegging out to the cover photo. I ended up trading the disc to some dude for a pile of loot, but truth be told, I don’t remember what any of the stuff was and couldn’t even be certain if I retain any of said loot in my collection. So, back to present day and Blasted in Bangkok is being handed to me by poor, underappreciated postman Sal, and it was like being in high school all over again . . . sans the alienation, massive waves of depression, and bad acne.

Amidst some healthy doses of nostalgia, I slapped the piece of wax on the turntable and applied needle to groove, and man! It was like I had never stopped listening to this thing! Rumbling bass and drums tore out of my speakers as “Fear the War Within” cuts through the shit and starts the pit. Despite the poor production or mix or what have you, the song is arguably one of the best tunes Hirax has ever committed to tape. Odds are, the song wouldn’t have had the same impact on me if it were produced to a sterling quality, the rawness of the recording truly captures the emotion of the music. Filled with mid tempo breaks coming out of speed metal passages, Katon W. De Pena’s soaring vocals and cry for equality, “Fear the War Within” shows the band stepping away from the traditional speed/thrash metal of the time and crossing over to more of the hardcore vibe. For me, this whole song comes together perfectly . . . primarily, it’s the lyrics and the way they seem to effortlessly flow out of Katon’s brain. For the past twenty years, I’ve sung the first verse like I was spinning the disc on a daily basis.

Flip this bad boy over to the B Side and prepare to have your face blown off by “The Beginning of the End.” Opening up as a true speed metal classic, Hirax then drop down to a killer guitar driven mid tempo mosh part. Man! What a killer groove! The huge bass volume gives the song a dense hardcore feel, but at the same time, has a warm tone that works as a nice counterpart to the more sterile and rigid guitar tone. Again, hearing this song for the first time in twenty years, it’s as if I had never stopped giving this disc love. I found myself immediately singing in tandem with Katon as he attacks the choruses and then I was a whirlwind of flailing limbs, completely oblivious of any obstacle that was in my path. I love Hirax . . . and it all started with Blasted in Bangkok. It appears that in 2000, the band re-released this demo on 10” white vinyl and included another track, so . . . it looks like I need to make another trip to eBay. www.blackdevilrecords.com

Heavy Water Experiments – Single

Heavy Water Experiments is one of those bands that have never been easy to pigeon-hole. Going back to when they were known as Imogene, I remember listening to them and thinking, ‘They’re heavy, but melodic; loose and spacey, but progressively complex.’ Heavy Water Experiments will always challenge the most discerning music listener, at the same time as they create a rich textural sound to have humming away in the background of one’s daily activities. So, when we received the new single from the band, we were excited beyond all belief, immediately racing to the turntable to give the sky blue vinyl a spin. As per usual with HWE, the bass is heavy . . . man, its heavy! But this time around, as the A Side single of “Hermes Told Me So” hums along in its mesmerizing fashion, we begin to recognize the elegant textures of the keyboards as they create a semi-transparent wall in the background of the song, Robert Salguero’s drum work channels a bit of the late, great John Bonham’s thundering attack, but maybe even more impressively, multi-instrumentalist David Melbye’s softer, more melodic vocal approach. God! The more I listen to this song, the better and better it gets. Heady and intelligent lyrics sung with an airy voice, mixed with the shimmering sound of the keyboards and propelled by a dense wall of rhythmic sound . . . does it really get any better than this?

The heavy drone tone of the Heavy Water sound continues with the B Side track, “The Plunge.” This time along though, the band seems to stretch itself more than what I’ve heard in the past. “The Plunge,” while still harboring many of those late 60’s psychedelic sounds has a heavy pop feel to it. For some reason, I keep thinking of the Mary Tyler Moore show when I hear this, when in actuality, the song would fit better with the imagery of a darkened basement during the Summer of Love . . . lava lamps bubbling away, couples curled up in bean bags, soft clouds of smoke from burning incense or a fired up joint . . . I love the subtle guitar interlude in the middle of the song and the big gong crashes. This song, like many in the bands repertoire, is deceptively complex; filled with great ambient portions of sound while retaining a heady musicianship that would befuddle the average musician. All we need now is a 12” version of Heavy Water Experiments so we can really get our freak on! www.heavywaterexperiments.com 

The Fitt – S/T

Sludgy, virulent, mean, and nasty, The Fitt is a new find for me. Submitted by Big Neck Records, this 7” is comprised of six tracks and all of them massively distorted nuggets of sound. I’m not really sure if one would consider these guys doom metal or sludge metal or stoner metal or what, but the common theme throughout all of the sound is the heavy density of the tones. On initial listen, I thought the pressing was at 45 rpm, but upon switching to 45 and listening, well . . . it was Alvin and his furry little friends were smoking a lot of herb and living in squalor, firing off some of the most insane music in their illustrious careers. But alas, the disc is pressed at 33 1/3 and after giving it the self titled disc a few more spins, it all began to make a lot more sense.

When you first hear “Hawk Eyes,” there’s no doubt that you’ll think something is wrong with your sound system. My God! That bass is everywhere! Then, as the rest of the instruments are identified, it’s readily apparent that The Fitt are hell bent intent on leveling cities by sheer sound intensity. The instrumental “M80” opens the B Side and is as powerful as the titled would insinuate. Like every song on the disc, the music is dense. Not just the bass tones, but the guitar tones, the vocals, hell . . . even the drums just sound unnaturally heavy. “Killer” is an unrelenting beat down with a quasi-psychedelic wrinkle. Listening to this song is akin to peering through a cloud of pot smoke and seeing the hazy images of this musical trio hammering away at their instruments. The distorted vocals lend the greatest hand in making this song sound like a trip to a face to face meeting with one’s darkest fears. The effect is one of claustrophobia and paranoia. The effect is fucking freaky! www.myspace.com/thefitt

 -  Pope JTE

 

A Sunday Conversation with Big Neck Records

Continuing on with our journey into the darkened places that are the minds of independent record label chiefs.  Today we voyage into the punk and rocking world of one of our favorite underground labels, Big Neck Records.

How did you get started running an independent record label ?

I used to own a couple nightclubs in Buffalo, NY. Both of my bars had live music, from rock n roll to punk rock to heavy metal and even to hardcore, My club Sanctuary was completely a punk rock, heavy metal bar where a bunch of band members (friends of mine) actually worked for me. I’m a little fuzzy on the details due to the inebriated state I was in, but Aaron Aducci from the Blowtops, Jimmy Hollywood from the Baseball Furies, and Sean Garreau from the Jack Jimmy Hoodlums and I were out hitting bars around Buffalo and they kept starting this conversation that I should help them out by putting out their first records. Aaron kept screaming, “I’ve got the perfect name for the label, Big Neck Records, because of your big freaking neck!”

Next I knew I was out hundreds of dollars but held The Blowtops first single in my hands.



What motivated you? Did you tap into a particular local scene or were you aiming to capture a sound?

It started out as a way to bring recognition to the local music scene and of course to help the bands get to that next level. Punk rock was pretty unheard of in Buffalo at that time. When I was in college it was the Goo Goo Dolls and The Wrench playing everywhere, but the Wrench broke up and the Goo Goo Dolls went to make millions on sweet love songs. Thus, at the time the punk rock scene had taken a nose dive. I was hoping my bars would create a crowd and a scene to go with the bands, but it was a struggle. We got there, but a little national recognition wouldn’t hurt thus, Big Neck was born. The first few records and first couple of years I went with a sound, but then as time went on it just came down to what I wanted to release and what I wanted to listen to.



Which was your first release?

Blowtops – Voodoo Alley 7”





Who's been your biggest selling artist to date?

The Lost Sounds, Jay Reatard is going gangbusters over there at Matador.

There's so much to learn about running a label, share with us some of the lessons you've learned along the way.

Keep it on the cheap, do your taxes, and don’t ever go in debt for the label.



What's been your label's high point? Low point?

The highpoint was probably this Big Neck festival in Buffalo, the Baseball Furies new record, a great lineup, and the Furies came in and did the most amazing punk rock show I have ever seen. I mean at that point I was like, “thank God I know these guys.” Label recognition high point was probably a couple years ago, I had a job that allowed me to put a lot of time into the label, but lately with my new job, not much time for Big Neck. But, I am trying.

The low point was a bit ago, when I decided to try and release records that I knew would sell. It worked, but I didn't enjoy the bands or the label too much at that time. So, I decided to return to my old credo of releasing bands that I liked and to heck with everyone else.



Who would you like to work with, but haven't yet?

I think I have worked with everyone I have ever wanted. Of course there are bands out there that you are like, “damn if they were on my label, I could afford to quit my job”, but then it wouldn’t be the same label with its current integrity. Did I just say that? Integrity?



What changes do you see ahead for the music industry?

As we move to the future more and more music is going to be self published online. There is really going to be very little use for a record label except for marketing. Currently it’s so easy to press your own records and distribute them online no need for a label. I think we will see the major labels taking a bigger and bigger chunk of merchandising and capital from tours. I think it's funny when label owners get mad at free download sites like Soulseek. I think they are great. I tell everyone to download Big Neck's songs online. Most people who love music will buy the record anyway. If nothing else at least the band's will have people at their shows. Truthfully, that is why I am in this anyway. Help the bands out.

What are you doing to stay on top of new and emerging technology?

Currently, I am including download cards in with my vinyl. So, easy and so cheap. I actually get annoyed when I buy a record and there isn’t a download card. Boot up soulseek. When I have more time you will see digital versions of everything online everywhere. When I have more time.



What's the biggest challenge facing you today as an independent label?

Getting the distributors to pay you, most of them are very good, but some just take forever or never pay you. Other than that the U.S. Postal service is killing us with their rate hikes, especially overseas.



How is most of your product sold? Mail order? Web-based? At shows ? Is this changing?

Most of my product is sold via mail order. I have an eBay store and a store on Big Neck’s website. The distributors make up a rather large chunk, but my label wouldn’t survive without my online sales. When I was younger I would go to shows and sell records, but now I don’t get to hit as many shows, thus I just push the records on the bands to sell when they are touring.


Seems that the sound of the bands you sign keeps evolving. What do you look for in your bands?

What do I look for in bands? I look for music that I enjoy. Mostly anything with some great hooks. Look at HOLLYWOOD their demo stuck in my head for 2 weeks. I couldn’t stop singing “Girl”. Otherwise, I do have to say I am lucky as hell that everyone in every band on my label consists of great people. I mean, seriously I have met some real jerks in other bands, but everyone on my label is cool.

How do you find your artists?

When I lived in Buffalo, it was mainly Buffalo bands. Now a days, I find most of my artists by word of mouth from other bands on my label, but a good percentage from demo’s mailed to me. I love finding that unheard of band that has just a great sound. Great referrals were, The Mistreaters. The Blowtops just got back from a small tour when Aaron Aducci threw a tape at me and said, “we played we these guys in Wisconsin and we were really surprised that they didn’t suck.” Jimmy Hollywood was talking to Jay Reatard one day when Jay was telling him about this new band, The Lost Sounds, on the spot Jimmy said, “we (Big Neck) will press the whole thing.” Great examples of demos being sent in, Sweet J.A.P. Heard it once, sent a copy to Jimmy Hollywood and we both agreed, so I called up Hideo and said, “we will do whatever you want, it’s amazing!” HOLLYWOOD sent me a demo that I just couldn’t get any of the songs out of my head for weeks, so I finally had to release it. Tractor Sex Fatality’s demo was ridiculous, I think I listened to it for a month straight and then I remembered that I forgot to call the band and get them to do a record with Big Neck, luckily I think they scared everyone else away.


Are you a club rat, constantly searching live venues for cool acts?

No, in fact I never used this approach. My judgment is usually skewed by beer. I do try and see most of my bands live before I press their record to make sure they are as great as I hope they would be.





Are you involved in all the creative decisions?

80% I would say. I leave most of the artwork up to the bands and I rely on a system of people who aid in my decision making, Aaron Aducci from Fatal Figures (ex-Blowtops, Suck, Backstabbers), Jimmy Hollywood (AV Murder, ex-Baseball Furies, Tyrades, White Savage), and a few other friends local to where I live.




What would you like to see happen for the future of the music industry and your label in particular?

Future of the music industry? No idea, but I would love to make enough money off my label to live on. In that manner I could do what I like for a living.

http://www.bigneckrecords.com/