Six by the Sputniks (1986) 10"

I intended to share this one a while ago seeing as I'd digitised it and even edited out all of the pops and clicks, but Tim of the Sputniks never replied to my request asking whether it would be okay to give away his work for free. I actually don't think he would have had a problem but suspect he never saw the message, being an oldie like myself, but one less able to navigate all the convolutions of this new-fangled facebook shite - and I didn't want to ask again in case he had seen the message but had been too angry to formulate a response.

Who the hell am I talking about, you may ask. Well, he was my pal and he recently bought the farm, which is upsetting, and I already wrote about him at length here.

For someone who was so busy, musically speaking, it still seems weird that Tim should have left such a scant recorded presence - this 10", a few tracks on the Hangman compilations, and I expect there are still tapes of Johnny Gash and others in a box in someone's attic which will probably remain there, which is a real shame; so that's why I'm sharing this now that it's gone posthumous, in memorial to a guy who deserves to be remembered better than he probably will be. If you want a physical copy, there's still a couple on Discogs last time I looked.

 

Thanks a fucking bunch, 2020, you utter fucking cunt.

 

Rest in peace, Tim, old buddy.

Download the six tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Rawhide
2 - Let's Talk About Living
3 - Besame Mucho
4 - Bumble Beat
5 - Danny
6 - A Swingin' Safari

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Envy - 1987 Demo (1987) C20

I'm quite excited about this one as I thought it was beyond hope, having already tried and failed to digitise the thing as I explained here. But, having recently discovered that the other player on my double cassette deck can just about cope with tapes which have otherwise succumbed to wow and flutter, here we are. It still sounds a little wobbly in places, but I'd say it's listenable, and at least it no longer sounds like Bourbonese Qualk outtakes. There's a programme called Capstan, I think, which one can download and use to eliminate wow and flutter, but I don't have it. If anyone wants to send me a couple of hundred dollars so I can buy the thing, that would be great.

 

Anyway, this was, on reflection, possibly my favourite line-up of this band (including the one which had me as a member) and these are fucking great songs, at least providing you like that sort of thing, which I did, or still do in the case of this tape. I've a feeling Paul was pulling towards being the Swans of Chatham (hence being named after one of the seven deadly sins, just like Greed) while Rajun and Prez were pulling in what was almost the opposite direction, which is why it worked so well, in my opinion. Someone should track down the master of this and stick it out as a 12" - fucking brilliant stuff.

Download the quintet of ditties and associate visual component by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - A Suicide
2 - Killing Man
3 - Prove Yourself
4 - Fear of the Dark
5 - Just For You


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SWANC - Mouldy Roll (1992) C90

Here's another one which fell off the back of the Pumf catalogue. Older boys and girls will recall Neil Campbell from ESP Kinetic and from er... being Neil Campbell, accounting for the NC of the acronym. The SW is Stewart Walden who was involved with Smell & Quim amongst other things. I looked him up on Discogs to see if he'd been a member of Bruce Hornsby & the Range or anyone else you will have heard of, and discovered that I actually know the guy on facebook under a different name and never realised; although to be fair this isn't even the first time this has happened. Come to think of it, the previous bloke turned out to have been in Smell & Quim too, which suggest there's a bit of a pattern there.

 

Anyway, apparently this was their third album. As you will hear, it belongs to the general pissing about with a tape recorder genre, in this case yielding a ton of short, occasionally tuneful blasts of absurdity, of which I feel Morons is, in particular, a masterpiece of its kind. As a whole, the thing reminds me of the Residents' Commercial Album, albeit vaguely. Mr. Walden has informed me that the live bonus tracks were actually Stan's idea - they appear in two selections at the end of each side on the cassette, but this sounded untidy to me so I've shuffled them all together to the end of the thing (tracks 40-52).

 

Enjoy.

Download all fifty-fucking-two tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - A Song for Stan
2 - (song)
3 - Good Old Casio
4 - The Park
5 - Mankin' Mr. Big Tits
6 - Fankle
7 - The Ballad of Sticky Foster
8 - Teenage Lobotomy
9 - Waiting for Little Red Riding Hood
10 - Middle Eight
11 - Git
12 - Something of Love
13 - Middle Eight
14 - Rub Down Transfer Song
15 - How to Tell Kids About Pee-Wee
16 - When I Fell in Love
17 - Ten Stewart Walden Lookalikes
18 - Windmill in Old Amsterdam
19 - Me 163 Komet
20 - Hit the People Who Can't Hit Back
21 - Skateboard Song
22 - Caspar the Friendly Ghost
23 - Mouldy Roll
24 - Morons
25 - Twenty-Twenty
26 - Prophet of the Age of Hourous
27 - Screaming Trouble
28 - Backpack
29 - Fit a Little Song
30 - Locked Groove
31 - I'm Glad
32 - Dr. Hungry Casio
33 - Woman in Love
34 - Working Men's Feet
35 - Hatstand Man
36 - Turnip Tulip
37 - Windowsill
38 - Ogle Drive
39 - Don't Pass Me By
40 - SWANC
41 - Feelin' Groovy
42 - Sound of Silence
43 - Morons
44 - Mmmorning
45 - Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
46 - Lenty!
47 - Home on the Range
48 - Got It Together Again
49 - Caspar the Friendly Ghost
50 - Here's What to Do...
51 - Mom, I Gave the Cat Some Acid
52 - Motorbike Song

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Cyclic Amp - Concrete Island (1989) C90

Now that COVID-19 has been defeated and no-one has it and we're all back to normal, kissing strangers in public and openly touching the faces of restaurant staff as we sip our Dettol mixers because 'Murica has this lil' thing we like to call the Constitution, buddy, we're likewise back to normal service here at Ferric Archaeology Towers and thus picking back up where we left off with Cyclic Amp. This is the last tape I have, and as with A Certain Sacrifice, I'm not entirely sure how I got it, beyond that it almost certainly turned up on my shelves at the same time. It's actually a tape of their vinyl releases - two albums and an EP - but without the sound of anyone dropping a needle on a record (when the drum beat goes like this) and so, I assume, almost certainly some promotional thing direct from either Probe Plus or the band themselves.

 

So here you go. If you enjoyed the last two, you'll definitely appreciate this one. I know I listened to these tapes but it had been a while and all I could remember was that they were noisy with maybe a bit of a Killing Joke vibe; but the more I listen to this stuff, now that I've dug it out, the more it becomes clear that they very much had their own sound, and it's surprising that they aren't better remembered. Maybe Probe Plus sunk all the promo money into Half Man Half Biscuit or something.

Download the eighteen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Dance
2 - Carrion
3 - Him
4 - Kill
5 - Caress
6 - Turkey Shop
7 - Dead Cop
8 - Slave
9 - Power
10 - Gun
11 - Human God
12 - Ugly Thoughts
13 - Christians
14 - Meat Slab / Holiest Image
15 - Concrete Island
16 - Slope
17 - The River
18 - Eat
 

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Philip K. Dick

Week four of the end of the world (at least here in Texas), and week two of me sharing digitised spoken word or dialogue tapes in the vague hope of helping someone, somewhere get through the lock in. This time it's Philip K. Dick, and I'm sure you will have heard of him seeing as the media is busily turning every last note he ever left out for the milkman into blue and orange action thrillers wherein various chiselled men resembling Tom Cruise stand in the rain and wonder if they are themselves real. One or two of you may also recall that he wrote novels, and a lot of novels, and novels which were mostly great. It's the novels I'm interested in, probably because I'm a snob and I think I'm summink special but I ain't all that, or I be a hater, or something along those lines. If you're a massive fan of Blade Runner or some associated bingetastic Netflix crap but haven't read any of the guy's books, this probably won't be of much interest.

I have a couple of Mr. Dick's interview tapes, one dating from 1974, one from 1981, plus a recording of some spoken notes he made for a work in progress, elements of which you may recognise. The 1974 interview (with Paul Williams) is pretty lucid, occurring at the end of the year in which Dick famously encountered the pink beam of light. The 1981 interview (with Gregg Rickman) dates from shortly before he died, and is kind of wild, but somehow works better on tape than in print, which fails to carry some of the tone. Both appear in the excellent The Last Interview published by Melville House. If you've read much Dick, and particularly if you've had a go at the Exegesis, you should find this stuff pretty interesting.

The stuff appears in reverse order because a) that's how it was digitised and I couldn't be bothered to copy/paste the 1974 interview to the beginning of the file or b) because, as Phil discusses in the Exegesis, time is running backwards, which we know from the contradiction of how evolutionary forces bring form from disorder, and universal entropy which seems to resemble this same process in reverse. Therefore time is running backwards and 1981 comes before 1974.

This material derives from tapes sent to me by a Welsh bloke back in the nineties, although I'm not sure where he came by the material. I seem to recall seeing bootleg cassettes of Dick interviewed on the counter at Compendium in Camden right next to the Bukowski stuff, but who knows? I can't seem to find any officially released version of this material, so hopefully I'm not stepping on anyone's toes here, and no attempt is made to supercede established copyright etc. etc., although if my sharing these is somehow keeping money from finding its way to anyone's wallet, I'm pretty sure it isn't Phil's. If you enjoy these recordings, maybe buy a few of his books, because as I say they're mostly great; or maybe buy a few of Tessa's books because I'm sure she would appreciate it, and I can strongly recommend her The Darkening of the Light as a powerful and compelling novel in its own right.

Anyway, click on this link and bag yourself a heapin' helpin' of Phil.

Normal noisy service will probably be resumed next week.

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Bukowski

This week features a slight detour from the normal programme and its associated steady flow of recordings of someone's fridge as it sounded in 1987, because everyone in the universe is presently confined to quarters and thus in need of light relief. The ever wonderful Die or D.I.Y.? recently did their bit to help us all power through the end of civilisation as we know it with a generous helping of Ivor Cutler; so in the same spirit, at least based on the idea that spoken material is good for coping with periods of solitary confinement, particularly if it's funny, and because even music you love will usually get on your tits after a while under certain circumstances, here's all I have of Smilin' Charles Bukowski.

 

If you're not sure who Bukowski was, I'm sure you have it within you to look him up. I've seen it opined that he's one of those authors whom no-one actually reads but instead simply claims to read because they think they're all fancy and like really lush but really they ain't and they don't know nuffink, but in my experience this has mostly been opined by aging babymen still reading children's exciting adventures at fucking forty and is therefore horse shit. Bukowski wrote about his life, which was mostly screwing, gambling, and alcoholism, but he wrote with a sharp eye and an astonishing wit, and I would honestly rate him as one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. His readings were pretty powerful, often very funny, even touching, and I have four tapes - three live, and one of Bukowski at home reading into a tape recorder back in 1970. These were lent to me by the late Andrew Cox, who actually properly introduced me to the guy's work by lending me Ham on Rye. The four tapes were sold from the counter of Compendium Books in Camden, if that's still even there - photocopied covers, presumably bootlegs of things which were either out of print or never officially available, so I don't own the copyright, and nor do I claim otherwise, and hopefully my sharing these isn't injurious to anyone's cash cow, although as Chuck himself is no longer with us in any case...

 

I bought a Bukowski album on piss coloured vinyl about a year ago, one of those 180gsm reissues, which turned out to be one of these readings - not sure if it's the same recording but whatever. If you enjoy this stuff, please seek out more...

 

...and hang in there. We can do this, unless it actually is the end of civilisation.

 

The Early Years

 

Hamburg May 1978

 

Los Angeles

 

Redondo Beach

Sod it - on an unrelated note (aside from being speech rather than music), here's the Sex Pistol's Heyday cassette while we're here - something to do with Fred and Judy Vermorel and originally issued by Factory.
 
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Cyclic Amp - A Certain Sacrifice (1988) C30

Here's some more Cyclic Amp, and a little weirder than last week's tape. This stuff was recorded for a Radio Merseyside session, or some of it was, but you can read about that on the cover. It seems that by this point Cyclic Amp had replaced their guitar with what sounds to me very much like a Casio SK1, the first really cheap (and admittedly rough as fuck) sampler, resulting in this thoroughly screwy shit we have here. It's a bit rough but I remember being in bands which sounded like this, so it works for me.

Not actually sure how I came by this tape, by the way. It doesn't seem to be on Discogs so maybe it was something one of the band put together which somehow ended up in my hands.

Oh - and you'll notice from the cover that track four was originally split in half on the tape, with its hindquarters on side two. Anyway, I've spliced the two halves together so as to restore it to what was presumably its original form.

Download these eight jolly ditties and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Ruby (Don't Take Your Love to Town)
2 - Girls Just Want to Have Fun
3 - Born in the USA
4 - Girls Just Want to Have Fun (mix)
5 - The Dead Hand
6 - Torture
7 - Caress
8 - Heaven
 
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Cyclic Amp - Deviations of the Impulse (1986) C60

I had vague plans to digitise and share a whole shitload of tapes from the Pumf label, and then realised that actually most of them are still very much available and as such can be purchased here. Nevertheless, having studied the catalogue I noticed I had a couple of things which Stan was no longer selling (and by a couple I mean literally two things), so having consulted with the lad, here's one of them, shared on the condition that I stress that Stan doesn't actually endorse my giving this stuff away for free and is in no way responsible for my doing so (apart from having sold me the original tape a million years ago, I suppose).

Also, the labels came off the cassette due to whatever glue Stan used not being up to the job (it happened to me too), so for once I've been able to scan those, in case any venture capitalist twats want to fake a few copies and stick them on eBay for fifty quid as rarities - as happened with a Grey Wolves cassette, actually a one off tape Trev had compiled for me personally and which the bloke trying to sell it claimed he'd taped off the radio. Wanker.

I don't know much about Cyclic Amp beyond that they were from Liverpool and had a couple of records out through Probe Plus, and that they seemed to be part of that whole spikey thing which gave us Killing Joke, Southern Death Cult, and all that bunch. This tape was a mix of live and studio stuff, presumably demos, and it's jolly good.

Download the sixteen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Ugly Thoughts
2 - Carrion
3 - In a Hole
4 - Caress
5 - Uniforms
6 - Love and Napalm
7 - Dance
8 - Skin / Scared
9 - Manipulator
10 - Foetus Mountain
11 - Christians
12 - Love and Napalm
13 - Dance
14 - Caress
15 - Carrion
16 - Ugly Thoughts
 
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Bubble Eyed Dog Boys (1990) C15

Back in 1990 I was cartoonist for The Lion Roars, the unofficial organ of Millwall FC fandom based in Catford, south-east London. I wasn't a huge fan of the magazine, despite drawing stuff they asked (and even paid) me to draw for them, but The Lion Roars was always redeemed by the contributions of one Reggie Spooner. His writing was always on point, funny, and he'd heard of the Photos - which scored big points with me. Also, unless I'm getting my wires crossed, he was friends with some bloke who managed a band, specifically this one, and they wanted someone to come up with a design for a T-shirt, so they asked me. I was supplied with a demo tape, a few bits of publicity material - press flyer, 8x10 glossies and so on - and I came up with the thing you can see above, hand lettered which is why the y looks a bit wonky.

They played at the Amersham Arms in New Cross around this time so I went to see them, and they were honestly fucking fantastic, so it was quite a pleasure to design something for a band I actually liked, plus I sort of fancied Anne, a bit. As you will hear if you download this stuff, they were a sort of er... powerpop thing, I suppose you would call it. They remind me of the similarly excellent and yet obscure Vivarama (formed by two ex-Cravats who weren't the Shend) who themselves were compared to Voice of the Beehive. I couldn't say for sure, not having knowingly heard anything by Voice of the Beehive (although I remember the name) but I gather you could probably say the same of the Bubble Eyed Dog Boys. I had the impression they were really going for the whole big time thing with record deals, promotionally speaking, but probably never quite got there, which is a shame, because I would have preferred this blasting out of the wireless to most of the stuff I did hear in 1990. I can't help think that Bubble Eyed Dog Boys was a terrible name, and maybe the road to international fame and fortune might have been easier to find with something a bit less comical. Never mind.

Actually, maybe it was because I mentioned liking the Photos to Reggie Spooner that he set me up with this lot, what with their being in roughly the same ballpark, musically speaking.

Anything else you might feel you need to know about the Bubble Eyed Dog Boys can probably be gleaned from the download. If the download sounds a bit funny, it's probably because you've ruined your ears with Macronympha and the like, and that strange thing with the different notes at different intervals is what is known as a tune.

Download the three tracks and all sorts of publicity material by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Understand Nothing
2 - 99 is Not Enough
3 - Turn Around
 
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A Shadow of Light - Awaken (1986) C15

Larry Peterson gave me this, so far as I recall, and I don't really know anything about them beyond that which may be gleaned from the cover, which I'm sure you're quite capable of reading for yourself. This one was produced by Martin of Attrition, which makes sense as they sound like a mix of Attrition and the Cure to me, and when I say the Cure I mean Faith - so the good stuff and not any of that twee Tim Burton crap. Actually, Play Your Joker makes everything the Cure recorded which wasn't on Faith more or less redundant in my view. You may notice the name of the label being Art Decade. I used to have a fanzine of the same name dating from around the same time which looked like this:

I assume this would have been the work of the same people but have no way of checking as I flogged the thing on eBay about ten years ago. Never mind. I have a feeling the aforementioned Martin of Attrition may have been interviewed therein. As you'll notice from the cover, they also had a C30 on Terminal Kaleidoscope, which I assume was the one which Alan Rider mentioned as having produced, but I don't think even he has a copy of that one.

Sorry. Don't know anything else.

Download the three tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - We Awaken
2 - Play Your Joker
3 - The Ultimate
 
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Basic Humour (1983) C10

Well, I did say I was getting near the bottom of the jar, and it looks like that time has arrived. It's not like I don't have anything else to share, but I'm pretty sure you've now had all of the full tapes from my shelves, things which had covers and so on - at least excepting the few I'm keeping to myself for one reason or another. This leaves us with downloads achieved by excavation or reconstruction - three tracks I had on the end of someone else's tape and that sort of thing, bringing us to Basic Humour.

I don't know anything about them, and the internet isn't very helpful in this instance. They came to me thanks to Colin of Refill Tapes who released this, this and this, and they came to me with a letter dated to 5th of December, 1983 in which the aforementioned Colin lamented there not being much going on in Devizes, Wiltshire. However, one ray of localised sunshine, relatively speaking, was provided by:

...one commercial band, Basic Humour, who were near a record deal with CBS, but that has dragged on and on and on. They gig mostly around Bath and we follow them everywhere. We know them quite well now. We've included two tracks by them on the cassette, but don't release it. They will kill us if you do!

Anyway, when I came across these two tracks during recent excavations, copied onto the end of something or other, I recognised them immediately. I had no memory of the band and their name didn't seem even slightly familiar, but clearly I played these two a fair bit when they were first sent to me, so here they are again. Maybe, hopefully, somebody out there will remember this lot and what became of them.

The illustration, by the way, is something I drew in 1983 and is nothing to do with the band beyond that it would have felt weird posting this without some accompanying image.

If there's no post here next week, it's because I haven't found anything to share. There will be other things here from time to time so check back whenever, just no longer on a weekly schedule. It's okay - I found summink for next week.

Download the two tracks and nothing else by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Umbrella in the Hall
2 - Seventeen Years

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Jonathan Hunt - Who is the Captain of This Ship? (1983) C46 / LP

So as to save time (at least for me), I should first direct your attention to this review of the first Spiro album which opens in customarily rambling fashion with all the stuff I would have written here had I not already written it there. If you can't be arsed, it's how I met Jon and who he is, although you may also recall him as the man behind the Ideal Husbands whose Town Planning now costs about a million quid if you actually manage to find a copy; and while we're here I also highly recommend that first Spiro album.

Anyway, to get down to specifics, here's Mr. Hunt's first album, at least under his own name. I put this one off because I really couldn't share the thing without asking and I was afraid he would say no even if I did manage to catch him during one of his apparently rare moments of facebookery; but catch him I did, and he said yes. So, having listened to this thing for the first time in at least a decade, it could be argued that I've saved the best for last. This isn't the last tape I'll share here, but I can see the bottom of the barrel; and I had honestly forgotten how good Captain is - something which genuinely justifies the term classic.

Like I said in the review, if you bothered to read it, this album came as quite a shock to me at the time, being so far removed from the sort of atonal racket to which I had become accustomed, but it probably isn't difficult to hear why it made such an impression on me - beautifully recorded (Jon was never one to cut corners) and played with a sound which I suppose I'd describe as combining the bittersweet pathos of later Madness with Matt Johnson's soulful inflections, mixed with just the right amount of whimsy to keep it light, but not so much as to sour the taste. These are songs of such individual character that I'm not sure anyone else would be able to do them justice, or at least I doubt they would sound as good as they do here. Regardless of actually playing the thing, both Loose those Chains (featuring the very wonderful Jez Randall of the Abstracts) and I Won't Be Satisfied have been with me, in my head, for most of my life, the latter because it's one to live by.

While, we're here, the Simon Gilbert who didn't turn up on the tape (as mentioned on the cover) is indeed the bloke who ended up in Suede, in case you were wondering. Someone really needs to write a book about the Stratford-upon-Avon music scene, although it probably won't be me because I was unfortunately unaware of most of it at the time.

As you may have noticed, you have a choice of two different versions here. This is because when digitising the cassette tape (which is, lest we forget, approaching forty years of age) I had some serious issues getting side two to play without it sounding like an early Pink Floyd jam session, except it played fine on my cassette player's auxiliary deck aside from a higher noise level for no reason I could fathom. So I fucked about with the EQ, noise elimination and so on, and so hopefully there's nothing you'll notice, but I decided to digitise the vinyl version as well, just in case. The vinyl version has a few minor pops and clicks, but you can just pretend you're listening to a record. The two versions feature the exact same mixes of the exact same tracks so far as I am aware, except with a different running order, and the LP replaces Time to Get Up with Little Dog. I seem to recall Jon thinking Time to Get Up was a bit too sombre and had spoiled the mood of the album.

I know I crack the occasional joke about boutique labels reissuing stuff posted here on 180gsm vinyl, but SERIOUSLY - someone genuinely needs to get onto this one.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link...

Tracks:
1 - Touch the Sky
2 - Penny Window
3 - Thunderbolt
4 - Launderette
5 - I Won't Be Satisfied
6 - Call the Coastguard
7 - Shoe Train
8 - 6%
9 - Time to Get Up
10 - Governor 'B'
11 - Intelligent Man
12 - Dance Germany
13 - Loose those Chains

...or the vinyl version by clicking on this one.

Tracks:
1 - Governor 'B'
2 - Intelligent Man
3 - I Won't Be Satisfied
4 - Call the Coastguard
5 - Shoe train
6 - Launderette
7 - Touch the Sky
8 - 6%
9 - Thunderbolt
10 - Loose those Chains
11 - Little Dog
12 - Penny Window
13 - Dance Germany

 
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Craptones - The Tenderest Touch From a Loving Heart (1992) C60

The previous Craptones tape seems to have gone down fairly well with a few of you, so here's the one that came after. It's the same sort of deal as the first one with sarcasm and chuckles aplenty, and beautifully recorded, this time tearing through all sorts of musical styles including death metal (or deaf metal, I suppose), synthpop, house music, acid jazz, and whatever the hell they felt like on the day. Extra points are awarded here for the live track which is actually just the boys at some karaoke evening, a move requiring the sort of balls that the likes of Bono and that bloke from Coldplay could only dream of; and there's Funky Monkey, which is just fucking brilliant.

 

If you didn't like Hi, I'm Geoff, you probably aren't going to like this one much either.

 

In this age of downloads, stuff recorded direct to your telephone, arsewave, and moonpunk, I'm not sure acts equivalent to the Craptones are still a thing, so if that's the case - screw you, younger generation. You're doing it all wrong.

Download the eighteen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Funky Monkey
2 - War Ha Mmm Yeah
3 - (Get Down and) Die Sucker
4 - The King is on His Throne
5 - Green Tuesday
6 - Nu Nu Nu Stu Studio Line
7 - Funky Vietnam
8 - Craptone Karaoke
9 - The New System
10 - To the Batmobile
11 - Sunshine on a Rainy Day
12 - American Girl
13 - A Wild Western Tale
14 - A Towny's Song
15 - My Love is Shining
16 - Jonny Skoda
17 - Teenager with Problems
18 - In the Jungle with Geoff

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Craptones - Hi, I'm Geoff (1990) C60

The Craptones were something to do with the Stepping Stones, who released one wonderful garage rock 7" before vanishing back to the cave from which they came. I'd say I don't know much about the Craptones but that isn't strictly true. I actually know plenty but their spokesperson, the one whom I asked if I could gives this tape away for free to online strangers, said he would prefer to keep it anonymous, so if you want to think of this as obscure, early material by the band which would eventually become Coldplay, Mumford and Sons, or Pharmakon, then be my guest.

What I will say is that the Craptones came as a breath of fresh air at the time, but for the suggestion of slightly beery farts. It was nice to hear something with a bit of a tune, which had been fairly well recorded despite being an exercise in taking the piss, and which actually made me laugh, and still makes me laugh, not least the deeply moving, come on, baby, light my flame, I'm so glad you're not on the game. If that ain't some seriously romantical shit right there then I don't fucking know what is. Some of this stuff is kind of offensive, as you might expect of a band who recorded a tape as Dr. Buttfuck & the Anal Intruders (which I stupidly gave away at some point), but I nevertheless find it funny because I'm five years old.

More Craptones magic next week, kids. Sorry.

Download these nineteen tracks and their cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Acid Flat
2 - Perestroika Potato
3 - I Saw You Standing
4 - Down SyndRumania
5 - I Know You're Mine
6 - Sound of Silence
7 - Love is Lovely
8 - I Want You [disco]
9 - Craptones Play Thrash
10 - Sit On My Face
11 - Sunny Day
12 - I Gotta Woman
13 - Craptones Rap I
14 - Darlings
15 - Craptones Rap II
16 - Craptones Chrimble
17 - Jon & Geoff's Groove
18 - The Talisman
19 - Num Num Girl
 
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Unkommuniti - Brutality of Fact (1984) 7"

I wasn't going to bother but I already had the gramophone plugged in so as to digitise the Larry Peterson 7", plus I've otherwise digitised nearly everything I can be bothered to digitise, plus there's probably about three of you who either don't have this or still haven't heard it. I'm sure these tracks turn up on that boxed set thing, so consider this free advertising for the same or summink.

The Unkommuniti were what Tim Gane (and others) did before Stereolab, back when we were mates and we all used to go around in a big gang dreaming of fame and fortune, so he'll always be Timbo to me. That was back when you thought the Alarm were the dog's bollocks. Remember that? Thought not.

Technically speaking, the Unkommuniti were actually what Tim Gane (and others) did before McCarthy, except I've never actually heard McCarthy so tend to forget they existed. I also have a couple of the Unkommuniti tapes but I'm keeping those to myself so as to avoid getting told off, plus I'm sure you can find them out there somewhere if you look hard enough.

The Unkommuniti were early Nocturnal Emissions with a Lovecraft obsession, if that helps, although krautrock traces can be heard even in this early stuff.

Enjoy!

Download it yonder.

Tracks:
1 - Brutality of Fact
2 - Wall of Sleep
3 - The Price of Your Entry is Sin

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