Doc Mustard and the Cobalt Kid - Nudie Beaches (1986) C20

It probably isn't called Nudie Beaches. It probably isn't called anything, but that's the first track and Demo is boring, even if that's what it is. I don't have a cover for this, or even the original tape as this was a demo I copied onto another tape with a load of other stuff.

Doc Mustard was Andrew Oliver, a much-loved busker of Coventry and then somewhere or other in Cornwall, who passed on just a couple of weeks ago so this is additionally a sort of tribute. Back in the eighties he was half of Doc Mustard and the Cobalt Kid - little fat guy with one of those faces which meant he always looked surprised playing the synth, plus a beanpole-style hairy metal dude in stripy trousers in guitar solo heaven so er... Soft Cell with more of a Benny Hill vibe, maybe. Oliver was something in the Coventry music scene for a while, playing in various ska or reggae bands of the time. I saw him when he played Maidstone College of Art with his Cobalt sidekick, possibly '85 or '86.

As you will hear, it's a bit music hall, maybe a bit Ian Dury, or even >shudder< Black Lace, and probably never got too many rewinds on the Sonic Youth tour bus, but in a live setting this stuff was so weirdly in your face and clearly gave no shits about seeming even remotely cool, and was accordingly very difficult to resist. Listen close and you can sort of imagine how it would have been had Brian Eno ever produced Bad Manners, or summink, particularly on You Go Your Way.

So here's to you, Mr. Oliver, obviously a much loved figure amongst the many who knew him, or even just knew of him. There's a load more out there on Soundcloud if anyone wants to have a look around. I'd link a few of the news articles I found but most of them require that the reader wait three or four minutes while all the shitty pop-up adverts sort themselves out.

Download the five tracks by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Nudie Beaches
2 - The Facts
3 - It Isn't Easy
4 - You Go Your Way
5 - Something to Say
 

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An Oral, Narcissical, Narcotical, Industrial Affair (1983) C30

I suspect this was one of those ideas which didn't seem quite so amazing to its creator next morning. I don't think CFC025 ever made it into any of CFC's photocopied lists of available tapes, and having slipped it onto the sticker with which he tried to promote the live Nocturnal Emissions cassette which was eventually vinyled as Chaos (tough - if all you beardy hipster shitbags can have your 'vinyls' then I get to use it as a verb), Cause for Concern's Larry Peterson seemed reluctant to further push the thing.

'What the hell is it,' I asked.

'You wouldn't like it,' he said.

'But what is it?'

'It's nothing. Anyway I've deleted it now.'

etc. etc.

Somehow I eventually managed to diddle a copy out of him, no art, no cover, just a tape with those generic CFC labels designed by Kevin of We Be Echo; and I listened to the thing, and it all became clear.

Actually, contrary to Larry's expectations of the morning after, I found it very entertaining.

Download whatever the hell this thing is by clicking on this link.

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Allegory (1992) C40

Allegory was a compilation put together by Mark of Impulse, the only one which wasn't associated with an issue of the mag, and, so far as I recall, dating to the time he was making a go of running his thing as a label - see also Konstruktivists AGM tape and the Muslimgauze 7" he released. I'm sure you're both all familiar with most of the contributors here - Pure Motorised Instinct was Stephen Jarvis from Nagamatzu, Tautologize represents Mark's brief tenure as part of the factor X pyramid scheme, and so on and so forth.

To briefly adopt my Negative Neddy persona, I have to say, thirty years later and I'm still fucking mystified by the brief descent into industrial rock karaoke with underwhelming cover versions of chart smashers by Front 242 and the Throbbing Gristles, not least because I seem to recall Another Headache being somewhat better than this one might suggest; but never mind. Maybe it's just me. Once over those particular humps, the tape settles into a very pleasing rhythm of not-quite-ambient sound concluding with Dark Star's stunning P2C2E.

There was also a tiny wee booklet of artwork with this one, some related, some not at all related and therefore maybe pertaining to persons who failed to stump up their tracks in time (guessing here), so I've scanned that and it's included in the download.

Download the nine tracks, cover and booklet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Pure Motorised Instinct - Shaking Death's Hand
2 - Voltoid - Tragedy for You
3 - Another Headache - Hamburger Lady
4 - Antonym - Cinnamon Air
5 - The Impulse fX - Tautologize
6 - Attrition - The Third House
7 - Brume - Suck Your Bones
8 - Konstruktivists - Untitled II
9 - Dark Star - P2C2E
 
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Power to Destroy (1993) 2C60

Usual terms and conditions apply regarding imagery which is probably supposed to upset you, aside from which, Trev really surpassed himself with the packaging of this one and probably would have won a design award were it not for all the pictures of rotting corpses. The cover was photocopied onto card, with each one presumably individually assembled so as to resemble something like a cigar box, with the tapes kept in a slide out tray thing. The tape itself was likewise pretty decent, with a fair bit of sonic variety, and certainly more than you might have expected from the scarier end of the electronic landscape. A few of these are unlikely to require any introduction (and the Ramleh track is blistering, by the way), and I'm sure you're perfectly capable of Googling the others, because I've never heard of them either.

Four of these tracks actually came from me, these being the work of Konstruktivists (of which I was a member at the time), Family of Noise, and Dada X (both of which are represented elsewhere on this blog, so please feel free to have a poke around in the index linked at the foot of this entry) and, at the risk of offending purists, I've actually replaced the tracks as digitised from my copy of the compilation with copies digitised from the master tapes. So they're the exact same tracks, just better quality through not being fourth generation copies.

Download the twenty-one tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Final Solution - Right to Hate
2 - M. Behrens / Junta - Soundtrack for Original Torture Performance
3 - Agony for Pleasure - Primal Scream
4 - Konstruktivists - Monsieur Y
5 - Sudden Infant - Destroy Your Manipulators
6 - MAUTHAUSEN - Kill the P.A.S.T. (1992)
7 - Con-Dom - Patriotism
8 - Ramleh - Melt the Cube (live)
9 - Family of Noise - Upwards and Outwards
10 - Genocide Organ - Kill Useless Nations
11 - Had.It - Interrogatorio a Pietro Maso
12 - Academy 23 / Grey Wolves - Terror Intensifies
13 - Exit
14 - Smell & Quim - Cunnilinguaphone
15 - Family of Noise - Sometimes I
16 - Taint - Orifice Training
17 - Dada X - Chocolate Disco
18 - M. Behrens - Splatterdance (II)
19 - Sudden Infant - Birth is the Beginning of Destruction
20 - Nailchrist - Nails and Blood
21 - Third Organ - Fuck Your Organs
 
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Raw Opium Enema (1994) C60

I've nearly digitised all of my compilations now, with only Impulse mag's Allegory and Trev Ward's Power to Destroy (next week probably) still to be transmogrified, so far as I can work out. This one escaped the routine sweeps because I had it under M on the shelf as a Mlehst tape, it being the work of the man behind Bandaged Hand Produce.

Aside from being one of those collections I always found exciting because you have no idea what the fuck is going to come out of the speakers when you first press play, this one is also distinguished by its exceptional sound quality, which seems to have been a thing with Bandaged Hand. I really should have picked up a few more of his tapes when it was still possible to do so.

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

Tracks:
1 - Brume - Ronde
2 - Herb Mullin - Over and Over
3 - factor X - Forever Roses
4 - T.U.O.B. + Okaniwa Fumiharo - n.v.1
5 - Expose Your Eyes - Absolute Spongiforms
6 - Mlehst - Anal Dentist
7 - Cacophony '33' - Riding the Aorta
8 - Lunus - Introductione alla Terra
9 - Expose Your Eyes - Bongo Trasho
10 - Sof Tillan's And - Television Teenager
11 - Cacophony '33' - Carboot (excerpt)
12 - Defacato - Burnett
 

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His-Create-He - The Prison (1982) C20

I don't know anything about this lot. Larry Peterson sent me their demo when I was putting the first Do Easy compilation tape together. I really liked The Prison so I included it on the tape, assuming they would eventually get around to replying to my letters, which they didn't. Little did I realise that the track, presumably the same track, had already appeared on a compilation album called Sing As We Go, released the year before. Subsequent research has unearthed the fact of their having turned into something called Bzu-zu and contributed to a record called Pulsebeat, as described by this bloke. The above picture is actually of Bzu-zu taken from Discogs, which is all I could find.

There was originally a photocopied cover to the tape with the band name - which was definitely hyphenated - spelled out in old English script, and The Prison was titled as I've given it here, not as given on Sing As We Go, for what it may be worth; but it's now lost, I'm afraid. What information I managed to save is that the first three tracks were live at the Clarendon, Hammersmith on 8th of November, 1982; and The Prison was recorded at Golddust Studios, Sidcup on the 6th and 10th of November, 1982, and engineered by Mark of some band called Legend...

Fuck me.

Okay. I've just looked up Golddust Studios and it's the place I used to go to get all my War Drum tapes duplicated around the end of the nineties, and I remember the aforementioned Mark fairly well as he was a good laugh and his rates were very reasonable. What a small fucking world it is. Jesus.

Anyway, I need to have a bit of a sit down, so I'll leave you with His-Create-He who failed to set the world on fire but nevertheless managed a decent demo tape, and were patently of the era of Conflict, New Model Army, the Danse Society and the like.

Just this week I was listening to an old Princess Superstar CD when I realised that the music on one track had been done by a bloke to whom I used to deliver mail when I was a postman in SE London - in fact, I used to deliver his mail using the same Royal Mail bike on which I regularly cycled over to Bromley to get my tapes copied by the bloke who produced the track I used on a compilation tape back in the eighties. It's all connected.

What a week it has been.

Download the tape by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - I Would
2 - Demon Dance
3 - Witchfinder General
4 - The Prison (that Jack Built)
 
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Scram Ju Ju - February 1984 (1984) C30

Firstly, just to get it out of the way, I found the above photograph on Mark Osbourne's excellent this is then, a photographic history of the Coventry music scene, so it's reproduced here with his kind permission. I didn't actually have any interesting images to accompany this week's tape and so image searched Dave Wankling, himself being Scram Ju Ju, only to discover he's the late Dave Wankling which is frankly a bit upsetting. I seem to recall Alan Rider mentioning that he'd seen the aforementioned Dave a while back (decades I think) and he hadn't been in a good way, therefore balls.

Anyway, Scram Ju Ju are probably remembered as the "normal band" on Third Mind's Rising from the Red Sand compilation (this was Dave's own sardonic description), but you may also recall Mr. Wankling from Urge, featuring the legendary Kevin Harrison, who had a couple of singles out, and of course as co-writer of Kevin's Ink Man - an absolute fucking corker from the Fly EP which you need to own if you don't already have it (downloadable from here but there's a vinyl version knocking around if you have a look). Anyway, I wrote to Dave when I was putting together the Moraals compilation, and we struck up a correspondence, and he sent me this tape. I think he was touched due to my apparently being the first person to bother to write to him having heard his track on Red Sand. So much for all those open-minded industrial weirdies. Maybe he should have knocked out a couple of Manson covers.

Big Beyond was the Red Sand track by the way. I copied it onto the end of the tape Dave sent because I'm a nerd, so I figured I may as well include it here and save you the million quid you would have spent on a Red Sand reissue.

As you will hear, Dave was a serious instrumental talent, and one can only wonder what else he might have done had this story had a happier ending.

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

Tracks:
1 - After All
2 - Ruled by the Heart
3 - Logic in Love
4 - Swelling
5 - It's a Hymn
6 - Big Beyond
 
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