WCKR SPGT – "The Charles Mansion: A Rock Opera By WCKR SPGT" (Traumatone – TT28) 1986

 

Another band name that won't get you on the Billboard Hot Ten Million,or even featured in a liberal conversation on the subject of obscure bands,because no-one can remember the name or pronounce it. Prince tried it with his 'symbol' concept,and that went tits-up, as did that eighties band, belatedly called Freur,when previously they only had a prince before Prince symbol as their moniker.Sadly, I am informed, Freur went on to become the profoundly irritating one hit wonder middle-aged ravers,Underworld,or was that Underpants?

The Freur symbol as seen on their smash 1983 number 17 hit in New Zealand, "Doot Doot".

I suppose WCKR SPGT come under the pranksters with lucrative day-jobs category, the UK equivalent  being something like The Ceramic Hobs, or Danny and the Dressmakers.

Apparently they've released a new album called "Hackney Diamonds", which by sheer coincidence happens to be the title of the new Rolling Stones album.Ho! Ho! Those cheeky Monkeys.

Skipping through their long established website, I spotted one Michael Gerald ,late of the group Killdozer contributing vocals on a duet with an Wckr Spgt-er, so they must be ok...yeah?

However, what fooled me into taking notice was the enticing prospect of some complete idiot making a Charles Manson Musical.

Only later did I realise that the title spelled Mansion and not Manson...i felt cheated,but isn't that what this lot are all about?

Merry Pranksters in the tradition of the KLF and Negativland, but with shitter music.

They must all be well in their 60's by now, having formed in 1981,but they're still chucking out the pranks it seems....and why the fuck not?

Oh,.... the music?

Its lo-fi DIY in the style we all know and love.Lots of echo on the Resident-esque hi-pitched vocals,with what hints at Harmoniser ownership in places;further raising my suspicious shell-likes to the well-paid dilettante possibilities, as an eventide Harmonizer cost a kings ransom back in the 80's. These chaps had a well paid job or two in their ranks.

Disappointed at the lack of a Manson Musical on these cassettes,a lead role tailor made for Michael Ball,and Ashley Banjo's Diversity street dancers as the Family....ON ICE!....wow!? I will now have to console myself with a fun moment, thinking only of my fantasy Rock-Opera Musicals.....someone already did "Plan Nine From Outer-space" didn't they...bastards!

I've got lots of Idea's for a musical about the Waco Siege,featuring Wayne Sleep as David Koresh? its just the problem as to who owns the copyright to Koresh's songs?

If its his surviving kids, forget it...they think I'm an Asshole....which isn't entirely inaccurate one must admit!?...you didn't know I was so Humble did you?

I'll suggest a Lucy Letby musical to my fellow justice seekers, including some dancing Babies and Michael Flatley as an evil jewish senior Doctor disguised as a loveable Irish consultant......P.S. have you selfish fuckers signed the free Lucy Letby Petition yet?...NO?...FFS...click here then!?

Tracklist:

No Sign of Danger

Ox Chase

The Girl (Still Running)

The House On The Hillside Strangler

In Retrospect

No Sign Of Danger 2

Goodbye Ox

Should I go in?

The Charles Mansion

Rude Awakening

Uninvited Guest At A Dinner Party

Everything's Scary

The Back yard

Respect For Lawnmowers

Unfair Prospect

Big-Faced Girl

History repents

Because(She'll do anything)

Elegant Dirt

Lost in Texas

Intuition and Stupidity

Elegant Dirt 2

Should I go Inside

Lifting the Tissue

A Thousand Hail Mary's

She Lies

Tarla Walks

I'll See You In Heaven

No Sign Of Danger

Getting to the Root

Pursuit

Escape

After The fact

Charles Mansion

Epilogue

The Charles Mountain

Folkal Point

The Cleaning Of the Rock

Getting It Down

God Talks To The Man and The Ox

Tustin Coin-op

The Ox Strikes Back

The Apology(Accepted)

God Starts To Cry

To The Bronx

Memories Of a Recent Journey

The Finding Of The Foot

Back at The Charles Mountain

DOWNLOAD from as far off broadway as you can possibly imagine HERE!

Chemicals Made From Dirt ‎– "Ike (1978-83)" (Hyped To Death ‎– Homework #203) 2000

 More hopelessly obscure US Post-Punk quirkiness,or as it is described on the sleeve as "World Class Art-Wave"? A genre within a genre. Just trying to think of other Art-Wave acts who were never referred to as, but were Post-Punk......Talking Heads?...Wire?......things are getting far too complex nowadays! How does an Art-Waver know if he's an Art-Waver or Post Punk?
It used to be far simpler back in the day.....all this was 'punk'.....not even Art-Punk...it was Punk.Heavy Metal was Heavy Metal.There's slow Heavy Metal (Sludge,Funeral,Doom +another 600 varieties), Fast Heavy Metal, (Thrash,Speed,Punk Crossover), Classic Heavy Metal (Judas Priest, Black Sabbath,NWOBHM)...and that's it!

Chemicals Made From Dirt, was a .......they're at it again on these sleevenotes!....a PunkWave.....what the fuck is that?.....Punk?.....from Long Island. So at least they were near the action,rather than some cesspit in Iowa or one of those more medeval states that seemed shut off from the world since the witch trials.

Again we have a group with a name that suggested immediate commercial failure.

At the risk of starting another genre, i'll describe this as that quirky variety of post-Punk which became popular among geeks wanting to form bands in the USA between 1979 and and 1983, approximately between Devo's first album and "Oh No It's Devo".......or Oh No! It's another Quirky Post Punk Band.

Alas, whereas Devo had a compact and memorable name, Chemicals made from Dirt (CMFD....even the acronym is a tongue twister!) had a difficult to remember moniker,if not forgettable.

Me, being a Fan of Quirky Post Punk, or Art Wave, Or art rock in general,beginning with XTC,who were the British Devo/Talking Heads.A face that launched a few post punk novelty acts like The Vapors,but not a wave of the likeminded as in the states.

CMFD left us with 25 songs recorded for posterity back in the day, and put on a disintegrating CD-r by Chuck Warner of Hyped2Death at the turn of the century, and they're all good. Personal fave is "Beatniks Looking For Tourists",'cus I like anything with the word 'Beatnik' in the title.....I'm that deep, that 'arty'.

Let a band spokesman finish off this confused narrative with something sensible:

"We called it an avant absurd experiment...We liked the idea of breaking down meaning to the point of abstraction and then reinterpreting it based on personal associations and meaning rather than having any absolute meaning.".....yep...Artwave alright!

Tracklist:

1 Manikin 2:44
2 M 3:31
3 Hard 3:26
4 Beatniks Looking For Tourists 2:40
5 Protein Pants 2:52
6 Another Dinner 2:41
7 Chemicals Made From Dirt 2:27
8 Panic-No Fusion 2:40
9 Girls My Age 2:40
10 17th Century
11 Communist Calendar Girls 2:41
12 Air Raid Drill 3:04
13 Medicated Elvis 2:09
14 Uh-Oh 1:12
15 Homeless Men 3:25
16 Fast Ocean Puppet 3:05
17 Fly To Work 2:43
18 Multiple Station Wagon 2:15
19 Claus Von Bulow 4:38
20 Dr. Shockley 3:17
21 Lost In The Cave Of Flying Dogs 3:56
22 Barney 4:00
23 Hiding From Bozo 2:48
24 Show World 1:37
25 Rapula 3:39

DOWNLOAD some dirty chemotherapy HERE!

Radio Free Europe ‎– "´79B" (MiG Records ‎– MiG 102) 1980

 Texas is hardly the most open minded venue for weirdo's, gays, and athiests,no matter how much open space they have. There is one oasis of sanity  however, in Austin,which remains a surprisingly bohemian outpost to this day,even in the Trump Era. No matter how much the local republicans and cowpokes would love to follow Donald's ally Russia's example,and make it legal to throw homosexuals off rooftops, and beat up your wife,as long as the injuries aren't visible; there is a thriving counterculture there that doesn't agree with all that nonsense,and risks serious injury with its non-christian ways.

Another thing that the USA didn't really have much of,is anything that sounded like UK DIY, mainly because of this inate need to 'ROCK OUT'!

Radio Free Europe are likely the only American band that achieved this unlikely feat, and of course, they came from Austin. Like it says on the insert,as a kind of subtitle for this C-45, "Americans Are All The Same"....well apparently they aren't....not much Rocking Out here on offer, and could easily pass for a DIY cassette made by a bedroom band from Preston, Lancashire in 1979. The same goes for American Post-Punk,which seemed to drop the doom which was so prevalent in European Post-Punk, and become almost exclusively a nation of Devo's.....this trait is reassuringly absent from this US DIY cassette classic. Nothing wrong with Devo mind,but do we really need hundreds of them? This need for a herky jerky nerdsville in every US town explains why XTC are an increasingly popular cult stateside....and there's definitely nothing wrong with that either. It's just that American in yer face Henry Rollins syndrome that needs eradicating... pronto......there are no intense shouty man Rollins types in Radio Free Europe, so you can relax......its subtle; a word expunged from Websters Dictionary, as full of spelling mistakes as it is.

Tracklist:

"Americans Are All The Same"

A1 M-Squad
A2 Dakota Trench
A3 Occupation Of French
A4 Suggested Reentry
A5 Time Between Seconds
A6 Manny´s Blues
A7 Shreds
A8 Alien Day (Houston)
A9 Falling Million Years
B1 After The Hum
B2 Adada
B3 Astral Airports (Austin)
B4 Mother´s Day (Austin)

DOWNLOADS are all the same HERE!

Jad And Nao ‎– "Half Alien" (Sakura wrechords ‎– C-08) 1997

Two living legends of DIY outsider otherness, Jad Fair of Half Japanese and Naofumi Ishimura of Yximalloo , got together to make a triptych of albums in the nineties and noughties.
Picasso said, and i've quoted him before in these unhallowed pages:
"It took me four years to paint like Raphael,but a lifetime to paint like a child."
Now these two 'Artists',and they ARE indeed 'Artists', had one up on Picasso,and missed out the Raphael part.While dreary unit shifters like Marc Knopfler spend a lifetime trying to play like the musical equivalent of Raphael,whoever that could be(?).Jad and Nao came out of the womb already painting and playing like a child,but had the good sense to stick with it for a whole lifetime.
This, the second of a series of three (so far?),has more of a hint of Jad Fairs work rather than Nao's;but thats mainly due to Jad's singing spread all over the 40 tracks,not to mention his reasonably proficient drumming.I could in fact prefer this collaboration to either one's nineties solo work.

Tracklist:

1 Absolute Pure
2 Blue Horizon
3 It's Mot Fair
4 A Real Mix Up
5 Do You Know A Secret?
6 The Crown Of Love
7 Snakes
8 Star Trick
9 Demon Monster
10 Her Hair Was Red
11 Hawaii
12 Is It A Great People?
13 Muslc
14 Sea And Sand
15 Mickey Mouse
16 T.V. Monster
17 Cupid
18 Fortune Teller
19 Ice Cream
20 Jimmy
21 Big Money
22 Bunny When Hop
23 Gentleness
24 Television
25 So It Is Written
26 Pancake Box
27 Valentine
28 Half Robot
29 Roll Over Beethoven
30 Attchi Muite Hoy
31 Monkey In Tree
32 Candy Land
33 Pretty Princess
34 Cowboy's Life
35 Bread And Butter
36 All You Gotta Do
37 Big Fat Monkey
38 Radio City
39 Only One You
40 Tonight

DOWNLOAD two halves of the whole HERE!

Negativland ‎– "Negativland" (Seeland ‎– SEELAND 001) 1980

Negativland were probably the ultimate 'Smart Arse' band,but their early records were probably the closest any American group got to the UK DIY sound. A lot of the tracks on this LP could have easily appeared on a self-released cassette by some depressed teen locked in a bedroom in some grey council estate in Accrington,(Which is in north western England by the way,around 1979.It just lacks that trademark muffled Lancastrian voice,droning on about kitchens and vacuum cleaners;instead we get some standard Californian whine,which does tend to irritate;luckily this appears rarely.
Contrary to their own press,they didn't invent plunderphonics, but they did evolve into some very effective pranksters,culminating in the U2 fiasco.
Very obviously European influenced,(note the Neu references in their name and record label), this has obviously distanced the members from the Good 'ol Boy rock ethic that permeates nearly every vulnerable God lovin' American.
This is the CD version,which came in a little  wallpaper covered box with various inserts,and a badge(Seat Bee Sate).I think mine even had a piece of bark included? Those wacky San Franciscans! There must be something in the water in that urban sector of northern California,as these chaps are very similar to those other residents of this city.....The Residents.....but obviously nowhere near as weird.

Tracklisting:

1. 1 (1:01)
2. 2 (1:25)
3. 3 (2:16)
4. 4 (1:22)
5. 5 (5:19)
6. 6 (1:18)
7. 7 (0:57)
8. 8 (1:01)
9. 9 (2:02)
10. 10 (1:36)
11. 11 (0:47)
12. 12 (0:33)
13. 13 (1:55)
14. 14 (0:38)
15. 15 (2:12)
16. 16 (3:17)
17. 17 (1:12)
18. 18 (1:34)
19. 19 (5:04)
20. 20 (1:09)

DOWNLOAD this positiv negativ HERE!

Crawling With Tarts - "Crawling With Tarts" (ASP) 1986

This could well be Crawling With Tarts' debut release as far as I know;and its not as you'd expect.
Not too much abstract noise collages,although there are a few of these of course. Mainly its a drum kit and Bass work out,in a DIY Post-punky duo stylee, and is therefore, 1/, very unamerican, and 2/, reasonably entertaining for that low brow area of the cerebral cortex that enjoyed Punk Rock so much.
Well pruned avant-rock minimalism,relieved of the more pretentious branches that can make so much of US'86 cassette culture releases so samey and , yes, boring. They got worse after this,losing the naive charm of discovering that you didn't have to be Led Zeppelin to make a record after all.

Track Listing:

Side A
A01 - 100 Times
A02 - Collision of 2 cultures
A03 - Art on the run
A04 - Zebra crossing
A05 - Zoo fux zoo
A06 - L'air de paisterre
A07 - Kanga + kippers
A08 - Dancing with skullboys
A09 - Grasses were ropes
A10 - Lou way zanin
A11 - Theatre of motar
A12 - Clay
A13 - Un autre chant funèbre

Side B
B01 - Sanddled for riding
B02 - E-wire walleye
B03 - Penis driver
B04 - Manor
B05 - Fi fi la fongs
B06 - Bones
B07 - Devant l'air de paisterre
B08 - Pianobar
B09 - Salinas balroom
B10 - Bacchant
B11 - Mass
B12 - Kingbird
B13 - E
B14 - Love 100 times

DOWNLOAD some tarts to crawl with HERE!

Prostate Gland Massagers - "PGM" and "Songs Everybody Knows" (self-released") 1984

Prostate Gland Massagers- "PGM + Songs everybody knows"

Before the Steaming Coils were called....er.....The steaming Coils, they were called?.......thats right, The Prostate Gland Massagers.
Here we have the madness of the teenage mind  captured in all its inspired glory. This is the closest American equivalent of the UK DIY cassettes I have heard, and 'Songs Everybody Knows' includes the best ever version of Brit Metal classic, 'Paranoid';with an hilarious slowing down of the main riff hook that totally emasculates and de-rocks the rock anthem terminally.They also manage to de-funk "Play That Funky Music", which is something to celebrate.
It also includes probably the only cover of a Faust song ever; in fact there are two Faust covers,both from their least interesting album(Faust IV).The krautrock vibe ends it all,with an (cough)....Amon Duul II cover???? Not too many of those about either; obviously vociferous record collectors were the PGM's! 
A steaming cauldron of frothy creativity on overdrive. Love it loads.

"PGM" (1984)

1. Smoky Joe (2:15)
2. Parading (0:39)
3. Nice People Of San Francisco (1:53)
4. Code Yellow (2:22)
5. Play That Funky Music (1:44)
6. Interlude (1:29)
7. Sue (0:15)
8. Sepulveda Bop (2:27)
9. I Think I Love Her (1:37)
10. I Wanna Be Potman (3:47)
11. Bird Of Prey (1:35)
12. Satan Is My Master (2:16)
13. 13 Daddy's Baby (0:31)
14. Take A Step (6:05)

"Songs Everybody Knows" (1984) 

1. The Stinking Boys (3:46)
2. The Valley Below (2:25)
3. Guidelines (1:57)
4. Jolly Talk (1:53)
5. Doctor Don (2:24)
6. Paranoid (2:13)
7. Eastern Craze (2:09)
8. Horses And Trains (1:27)
9. Invocation (2:52)
10. Harvest Song (1:44)
11. Bell Bottom Blue Jeans (2:38)
12. Sandy Wittsen (1:57)
13. Willie Nelson In Bali (2:33)
14. Brian (5:21)
15. Teenage Prayer (1:59)
16. Freedom (5:41)
17. Bleeding Games (3:19)
18. It's A Bit Of A Pain (4:44)
19. Jennifer (4:49)
20. Paranoid (Live) (2:27)
21. Sandy Wittsen (Live) (1:30)
22. Doctor Don (Live) (3:00)
23. Now I Just Laugh (1:44)
24. Stoned With Jac Zinder (1:50)
25. Archangel's Thunderbird (3:26)

DOWNLOAD and have your mental glands massaged HERE!

Jandek - "Staring at the Cellophane" (Corwood 0744) 1982

To complete this horrific journey into the dark planet that is Jandek, its back to 1982,for one of the very best early period albums; and boy is this a downer!
The downward spiral continues, this is ghost town music... Spooky, personal, honest,reminiscent of a miserable sunless week in a Gulag, in Siberia, in February.Yes.... that much fun?
The focus here is on a very singular mid-tempo acoustic-guitar sound, with special attention to finger pickin’.The big exceptions are the muted hard-strum violence of “Sound I”, which is mostly instrumental but quite different from the melancholy plucked-string approach; and a weird history lesson called “Nepoleon in Russia” [sic].
Another of the best Jandek  records,with classic title, and classic cover art.

Tracklist

A1	Michael	2:57
A2	This Is For You	3:10
A3	Riddles Riddling Me	2:44
A4	Basic Themes	2:50
A5	I See Lights	2:34
A6	Rather Be Blind	1:53
A7	Away	2:18
A8	Don’t Get Too Upset	2:35
B1	A Letter	2:23
B2	Nevermore	3:01
B3	Sand I	2:30
B4	Nepoleon In Russia	3:05
B5	Split To The East	2:55
B6	Number 14	2:43
B7	Blood And Bone	3:17

DOWNLOAD some cellophane to stare at HERE!

Jandek - "Twelfth Apostle" (Corwood 0760) 1993

After a spate of uncharacteristically revealing album covers, Jandek hides again. Colour photo of the back of a house in bright daylight. Several windows are visible and the curtains on all of them are of course drawn tight. There is a brick garage behind the house with a yellow birdhouse (?) on top of it. It’s conceivably the same house as on the cover of You Walk Alone; white colour and width of siding match, but there’s no way to be sure. It’s definitely not the house from Telegraph Melts though; the garage doesn’t match.
The most “pure” Jandek album since Blue Corpse — rock and/or blues overtones are basically absent. All-acoustic, one guitar only, no drums, three to four minute songs. A heavy-handed echo effect surrounds the guitar on some of side two. Mood is thorny, ambivalent, a little impersonal, serious but not depressed like Blue Corpse.  Stylistically, it resembles the CD’s that follow, not the LP’s that came before.
Although I dread to think what the track "White Knob" is about!?

Tracklist:

A1	Walking	3:06
A2	You're Not Even Alive	3:35
A3	Native Land	3:53
A4	Rooftop Sunset	2:18
A5	Bedside	2:48
A6	Solid Stone	2:41
B1	Out In The Rain	3:12
B2	The Gone Wait	3:23
B3	Could Be Anyone	2:56
B4	Twelfth Apostle	4:25
B5	White Knob	3:17
B6	Whiskers	2:13
B7	Four By Four	2:50

DOWNLOAD apostle number twelve HERE!

Jandek - "One Foot In The North" (Corwood 0758) 1991

One night in 1991 Jandek couldn't sleep, so he spent the whole night making a record.... This record. At least that's the image this conjures up in an imagination that is rapidly becoming seriously diseased by listening to too much fucking Jan,Dek!
The first three 'tunes' are more come down 'downer' folk, like early Jandek but with randomly plucked electric guitar in place of detuned/untuned acoustic.
This dark atmosphere is either alleviated or exacerbated by the arrival of softly pummelled, arrhythmic,  drums, and the odd flaccid blues boogie.
It does include another of thee classic Jandek tracks though.‘Upon the Grandeur’ lives up to its title; eight and a half minutes of beautiful panoramic balladry, oozing a melodic atmosphere of melancholic loneliness; rather than the desperate isolation we hear in the rest of the album.
Like the classic cover photograph, the music exists as a silhouette in a dimly lit room at night.

Tracklist:

A1	Yellow Pages	6:57
A2	Angel	3:17
A3	Show The Man Your Picture	1:51
A4	Think About Your Lady	2:41
A5	Real Fine Movement	2:36
A6	Alehouse Blues	3:10
B1	Upon The Grandeur	8:27
B2	Phoenix	4:43
B3	Dreaming Man	3:33
B4	Breast In A Moonbeam	2:32
B5	Honey	1:20

DOWNLOAD 12 inches of the North HERE!

Jandek - "Somebody In The Snow" (Corwood 0757) 1990

Crosby,Stills,Nash and Jandek would have been a terrible Idea; but Jandek,Jandek,Jandek and Pat works just fine.
I listened to this record last night and it reminded me of an entertaining,but deranged, version of Crosby,Stills,and Yaaaawwwn!? The night before, it suggested the Eagles on Angel Dust, as heard by a paranoid schizophrenic on 'The Chemical Cosh' medication.
Tonight, it sounds like a pretty sophisticated Jandek record, with a bunch of excellent,but casually stapled together, distintegrating country rock tunes. If only country music was this affecting, instead of being the most pointless drivel still floating in the toilet of Pop.
We get Nancy's sister,Pat, back for another stab at being Jandek's lead singer for a few tracks. She ain't too bad at it either;though she isn’t as strong a singer as her sister, may I add?
The acappella track “Om” sticks out, with its 'Rosemary's baby' vibe, and “Bring It In a Manger”, is definitely one of the best Christmas songs ever, and certainly the only one with the word “genitals” in it.
A very consistent and listenable Jandek album to kick off the Nineties.

Tracklist:

A1 Tell Me Who You Are 3:48
A2 Come Through With A Smile 5:52
A3 I May Not Be Around 2:03
A4 Pastimes 3:15
A5 Om 2:27
A6 Bring It In A Manger 2:17
B1 Walking Around 2:48
B2 Sense Of Reason 2:00
B3 Remind You 2:32
B4 Corner Of The Street 2:51
B5 Stick With Me 2:42
B6 What You Give Me 3:05
B7 You Sing A Song 1:33
B8 Walking Home 2:03
DOWNLOAD and be somebody in the (s)know HERE!

Jandek - "The Living End" (Corwood 0756) 1989

A strange beast is this,iconic Jandek cover image and all.
The first track is some kinda smacked up lounge jazz played by four musicians in different rooms.The second track is the same, using the same rhythm guitar riff, but this time someone in one of the rooms is now trying to learn the blues.
Track three is the same again, except the band was now on tranquillisers.
Track four, they are back in one room, maybe two, and unleash an amateurish Boogie Woogie number, like a stoned Status Quo fronted by a drunk nutjob.
Then we get several tracks of conventional  sounding jam based songs,with a mystery guest guitarist,which are quite forgettable.
The last two tracks are worth waiting for, with the return of Jandek's Muse, Nancy. The first a moaning  disjointed ballad with no particular time signature which meanders aimlessly, then stops. The second, another 'best of..."fractured classic, "Crazy" , which returns to the wild Free caveman punk of "modern dances".
Another great collection from the endlessly bizarre Jandek.

Tracklist:

A1	Niagra Blues	3:41
A2	Janitor’s Dead	3:00
A3	Slinky Parade	4:31
A4	The Living End	2:17
A5	License To Kill	2:32
A6	Talk That Talk	6:25
B1	Start The Band	1:32
B2	Girl From America	1:53
B3	Embrace The World Outside	2:03
B4	In A Hush	2:45
B5	Take Me Away With You	6:50
B6	Crazy	4:16

DOWNLOAD an end to living HERE!

Jandek - "On The Way" (Corwood 0755) 1988

Probably one of the, if not thee, most accessible Jandek albums from his vast canon of inaccessibility. The cover displays a world shrouded in darkness, but slide the disc out, and its like removing Jandek's damaged soul, exposing it to light. Behind the conventional chord strumming, and half-decent attempts at corroded blues workouts, still lies the explosively cathartic ego-less Id bearing of all of these records.
Every Jandek record is a letter as personal as it is anonymous. I get the feeling I should not be listening at all? even to study, analyse, and ponder over these personal soundtracks is,somehow,quite immoral. Its like hiding behind an adjoining door, and peering through the keyhole at something very,very, private.
The dimly lit silhouette of a drum kit, hiding in the shadows, is almost a reference to the barely audible drums on the first three tracks; submerged in the distance behind two overdubbed guitars,and a rare appearance of a bass. Jandek almost displays a reasonable rocky blues voice on a few of these tracks, which maybe suggests 'he could do better' if he wanted to; which is kind of reassuring that all this ain't just a joke on us types who read too much into stuff. Just maybe, Jandek isn't a mentally disturbed social casualty who really is trying his best to make a Dire Straits record and failing, unknowingly??

Tracklist: 

A1 Wrap It Up 3:04
A2 Bring It Back To Seventy-Five 2:29
A3 Message To The Clerk 6:46
A4 Give It The Name 5:33
A5 Ambient Instrument 2:23
A6 Sadie 2:20
B1 I’ll Sit Alone And Think A Lot About You 8:50
B2 The Only Way You Can Go 5:28
B3 I’m Ready 5:45
DOWNLOAD on the way by the way HERE!

Jandek - "Modern Dances" (Corwood 0752) 1987

How many times have I got to tell you?
"DON'T PAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNTTTTTT YOOOOOUUUUUURRRRRRR TEEEEEEEEEEEETHUH!"
So goes this opening charming duet, a remake of the "Telegraph Melts" psycho-classic, 'Painted my Teeth';with a yelling Jandek and Nancy barking instructions about what not to do with various dental areas. The electric guitar cacophony returns with the tumbling drums, tumbling like plastic buckets being tipped into a landfill site.
It even seems like they are having fun(?) as I detect stifled laughter near the end of the tune. So it seems that Jandek and Nancy are back together after "Blue Corpse",and enjoying each others company?
And it goes on for eight tracks, wild distorted party music, with Nancy singing,shouting and barking on several of 'em. A primal falling apart version of the R'n'R myth.A texan version of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks,but a not taken seriously redneck version. Rabid naked catharsis on vinyl.
The last three tracks seem to be leftovers from another earlier album. Gone are the Drums, electric guitar, and, regrettably, Nancy! Back come the randomly plucked acoustic, and the whining and the whinging and the moping. Well, we didn't want you to enjoy yourself too much did we?

Tracklist:

A1	Painted My Teeth	4:47
A2	Twelve Minutes Since February 32'nd	4:28
A3	Hand For Harry Idle	3:58
A4	Number 512	3:30
A5	Nothing Is Better Than God	4:22
B1	Spiritual Song	4:20
B2	Spanish In Me 003	4:21
B3	I Want To Know Why	5:15
B4	Simple As That	2:07
B5	Open E	3:17
B6	Carnival Queen	3:33

DOWNLOAD a dance of the modern style HERE!