Justin from Queens wrote:
The correct rank could not be any easier -

Berzerker
Listening to Berzerker again
Scratch Acid
Listening to Berzerker again
Just Keep Eating
Listening to Berzerker again

FYP.

I've been cooming across these hysterical/ awesome "back porch video" things on youtube... here's a standout...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoZIH3Bm ... re=related

check out wm. sims' hair!

(hope this won't get kerbled)

tthomas wrote:This guy has the funniest reviews of Scratch Acid's material I have ever read:

http://www.markprindle.com/scratch.htm

NOT CRAP!!!

Those reviews are pretty good. They gave me a good laugh.

I finally bought "The Greatest Gift" from my work the other day and I had one of those moments after listening to it front to back were you're pissed at yourself for being too lazy to check a band out right when you hear about 'em. I'm a Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard noob this year.

This is some of the best punk rock I have ever heard. Although, I still think Liar and Goat kick The Greatest Gift in it's beer stained balls, The Greatest Gift is fucking great.

There are very few times were I feel music actually has a twitch of scariness to them and Scratch Acid has that. For me at least.

Although there are a couple tracks off of Down that give me a creepy feeling while listening and walking home from the liquor store down the street from my house.

NOT CRAP.

AnthonyVillalobos wrote:I still think The Greatest Gift kicks Liar in it's beer stained balls.

FYP

(Edit: Oh, well, okay, maybe it's not that much better...but it is better.)

Justin from Queens wrote:Berzerker
Listening to Berzerker again

= Justin

agreed. i don't care for the others, but this album is great...

There's something really special about the first EP. I can't put my finger on it. I think that the general feeling I get from listening to it is that it's a homegrown collection of really personal songs from a group of young guys who lived, ate and drank with one another 24/7. I don't even know if that was the case or not. But that's what it sounds like. The organic, fluent delivery of it all sounds almost inevitable. A voicing of urgent, personal demands.

Im going to go listen to it right now.

As great as TJL is, you lose that with them. They were four professionals. I don't mean that in a bad way at all. They were like hit men who had been on the job for thirty years and knew how to pick every lock in the city. The rock had seeped into their every pore. I think they were probably much more conscious of how excellent their music really was. With the early Scratch Acid, though, you get that explosion of experimental gusto, as though they're trying to do something that had never been done before.

It must have been difficult for them to develop their own language in Austin, TX, under the albatross of the '83-'86 Butthole Surfers, who were such an incredible band during that period. But they did. They gave birth to a music that was way more physical and less brain-bendingly cerebral. Darker and more clotted, like being at a circus and eating a Klondike bar instead of the rainbow-colored, PCP-laced cotton candy then being proffered by the Surfers.

Other albums that have the debut EP's aura of election: Minor Threat's first EP's, Dinosaur Jr.'s first coupla albums, the first B-52's, everything by the Minutemen, Sonic Youth's EVOL, lotsa early stuff by Flipper and that great Ohio shit like Peter Laughner's bands and the Charlotte Pressler stuff and the Pagans. Like you're listening to a team. Not just a group of people who like how each other plays his instrument. A bonded unit.

I've loved Scratch Acid ever since I first dug into their trough after having discovered TJL. I think the later material ("Mary Had a Little Drug Problem," for inst) loses alot of that sense of intimacy that the earlier stuff had.

Rey Washam is a force.

I 'specially love when Brett plays a shimmering, discordant heat-sheet right after having slip-slided his finger up and down the neck for a while. I'm thinking of those weird, out-of-body vibrations that plop plumb into "Owner's Lament" and "Crazy Dan" (such an amazing song!), rearranging your cellular makeup the way those re-mixed Wilford Brimley videos do if you watch them ten times in a row whilst Robo-tripping.

Not Crap.

I have a feeling Nerb has a few Lester Bangs articles around the house.

ubercat wrote:I have a feeling Nerb has a few Lester Bangs articles around the house.

Or just smoke up his ass.

i went on tour with some people. there were five of us. 3 of them weren't into the same kind of music i am. it was a great moment when the drummer's ipod played "crazy dan."

thanks scratch acid. the trip to ohio didn't seem that long after that.

Dr. Geek wrote:

ubercat wrote:I have a feeling Nerb has a few Lester Bangs articles around the house.

Or just smoke up his ass.

Last time I checked he only had shit up there.