cc wrote:

brain dead "improv" "hardcore" from FL in '85... never heard it much messier. it's wonderful though. easy to find cheap on lp.

This is a pretty funny album. What a weird band. It does indeed sound like a mess. "They Died w/ Their Willie Nelson T-Shirts On" is pretty lovable though.

Peripatetic wrote:It's not my favorite record of all time but I love it.

And it's all sorts of fucked up in about 100 different ways starting with the cover.

This album actually has its moments.

tommydski wrote:

Peripatetic wrote:It's not my favorite record of all time but I love it.

And it's all sorts of fucked up in about 100 different ways starting with the cover.

This album actually has its moments.

Yeah, there's one moment where it sucks really bad. Then there's another moment where it sucks even worse.

Ace wrote:

cc wrote:

brain dead "improv" "hardcore" from FL in '85... never heard it much messier. it's wonderful though. easy to find cheap on lp.

This is a pretty funny album. What a weird band. It does indeed sound like a mess. "They Died w/ Their Willie Nelson T-Shirts On" is pretty lovable though.

it is funny but it's like creep humor, like early No Trend playing thrashy hc or something? it's also only one guy. he made a second lp thats way more like Chrome. actually this one kinda sounds like chrome as a hc band ... i dunno. a big favorite for retard rock.

cc wrote:

Ace wrote:

cc wrote:

brain dead "improv" "hardcore" from FL in '85... never heard it much messier. it's wonderful though. easy to find cheap on lp.

This is a pretty funny album. What a weird band. It does indeed sound like a mess. "They Died w/ Their Willie Nelson T-Shirts On" is pretty lovable though.

it is funny but it's like creep humor, like early No Trend playing thrashy hc or something? it's also only one guy. he made a second lp thats way more like Chrome. actually this one kinda sounds like chrome as a hc band ... i dunno. a big favorite for retard rock.

I actually have that second album and it's pretty retarded. Yeah. retard rock is a pretty appropriate term. i do have a soft spot for the first one, though, it's just so silly.

God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It is a true disaster.

10 proofs:

1 - There are times when it sounds like Mayo Thompson is intentionally sabotaging his own songs ("Sheriff Jack," "The Shirt").

2 - The band has about as many chops between them as a half-eaten lamb dinner, and most of them belong to drummer Tommy Smith.

3 - Thompson's voice is definitely an acquired taste. Remaining in tune is not his specialty.

4 - There are snippets of songs that make absolutely no sense and are intended to do nothing but confuse the listener ("Big," "Night Song," the four-second "Listen To This").

5 - There are lyrics that prove that some of Syd Barrett's solo stuff is absolutely coherent and poetic in comparison ("Ravi Shankar: Parachutist," "Tina's Gone To Have A Baby," "Coconut Hotel").

6 - There are intentional snippets of atonality and free improvisation that just don't do anything at all and were clearly included just to up the artsy quotient ("Free Piece," "Piece For Piano and Electric Bass Guitar").

7 - On several songs, female voices, sometimes in a chorus and sometimes solo, pop up at the most unexpected times for no reason at all.

8 - There seem to be only about seven songs that are fully developed, actual songs. There are twenty songs on the album.

9 - For a band that's ostensibly a rock band, they only rock out about three or four times on the entire album. This is one of the quietest albums I've ever heard.

10 - The entire album reeks of self-indulgent, incredibly artsy and pretentious acid-damaged surrealism taken way too far.

It's one of the most unique albums I can think of - it is absolutely bizarre and original. Though all the criticisms I leveled at it are completely true, the fact remains that they made this album in 1968. Who the hell had the balls to do this in 1968? They had to have known they were going to sell about five copies in the next ten years. Many of the fragments are very melodic ("Music," entirely given to the female chorus) and some of the songs are great ("Say Hello To Jamie Jones," "Dairymaid's Lament," the memorably strange, creepy and loving "Victory Garden," apparently written as a love note to Hitler from Eva Braun). Plus, this album has one of the best intentionally atonal, sloppy, and insane rants ever: "The Jewels of the Madonna," which sounds like a bunch of braindead Catholic schoolboys trying to play "Psychotic Reaction" and failing.

What a weird album. Totally not crap.

SecondEdition wrote:God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It is a true disaster.

I was about to list that one.

To a lesser extent:

ergo space pig wrote:

SecondEdition wrote:God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It is a true disaster.

I was about to list that one.

To a lesser extent:

I never heard either of these two albums, though I have wanted to. I heard Easter Everywhere was a relatively normal album, all things considered; very Dylan-influenced, conventional and beautiful songs. Did I get the wrong description?

(Edit: didn't see the Guided by Voices album. I don't really want to hear that. GBV has never looked like an appealing band to me.)

SecondEdition wrote:I never heard either of these two albums, though I have wanted to. I heard Easter Everywhere was a relatively normal album, all things considered; very Dylan-influenced, conventional and beautiful songs. Did I get the wrong description?

It's not a disaster in the sense of God Bless the Red Krayola or Third/Sister Lovers but there are some very unintentionally peculiar songs on there like the Dylan cover or "I Had to Tell You". I also changed the GBV album, because Alien Lanes is sequenced in a way that offsets its disasterness but Same Place The Fly Got Smashed is on the cusp of being terrible throughout the album.

SecondEdition wrote:(Edit: didn't see the Guided by Voices album. I don't really want to hear that. GBV has never looked like an appealing band to me.)

you're really, really, really missing out. Listen to Alien Lanes.

Speaking of GBV, I can't believe I forgot this one.



One of the strangest albums I've ever heard.