Lovesliescrushing - Youreyesimmaculate

(Projekt, 1994)

A song apiece from bloweyelashwish and the then-unreleased xuvetyn, on purple vinyl in a limited edition of, uh, 1000. The comparisons are easy here: like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins, maybe even the less aggressive moments of Flying Saucer Attack, it's all effects-heavy guitar and girl-voice rumble 'n' vroom, though largely avoiding drums and obvious/traditional song structure. Recorded on four-track, too, for maximum sonic bleed and speaker-rattle! A nice package for sure, but this music is actually best heard on CD, as everyone's least-favorite format does at least allow for 80 minutes of nonstop auditory immersion without mood-wrecking breaks to flip the 7" over. And, while we're at it, also VERY recommended is mastermind Scott Cortez's other project, Astrobrite, which retains the oceanic guitars of Lovesliescrushing while adding nifty pop elements to the soup. The first album was recently reissued on LP by some genius, and the only person smarter than that guy is ME because I went and ordered myself a copy the other night.

Los Llamarada - The Very Next Moment

(S-S Records, 2007)

RAW! And probably the only Mexican slackfuck 7" in my collection. With its shit-sound abrasiveness and vaguely early-Stooge-ian boneheadedness, I actually prefer this stoned, careening -- yet tight enough -- bloomph over anything on the band's kickin ghettoblast debut LP, The Exploding Now, as it offers both better songwrite and noise-as-texture -- rather than just noise-as-noise -- while still retaining the nifty woo-hoo energy of the alb. And on the B, Brenda Lee's (not Peggy Lee, as credited on the sleeve, dudez) "I'm Sorry" is rendered pleasantly unrecognizable as a buzzing, caterwauling, midtempo clomper, all VU '66 rather than the familiar she-croon syrup. So that's swell. And very worth having.

I happened to see Los Llamarada live around the time of this release... remember them being fun and surprisingly young, and also remember accosting one ill-at-ease member at/to whom I insisted -- probably at length -- that I'd tried my best to get Prindle out to the show; they'd recently conducted an interview wherein they'd fluffed his site. I'd failed, though. Could I have tried better, That Guy from the band? Yes, there is no doubt. But still. Don't be mad. Listen to the B-side here and imagine it coming straight from my heart. PLEASE.

Bruce Lose - What's Your Name

(Subterranean, 1983)

Well gosh, Bruce Loose loses an "O" to become "Bruce Lose", and then goes and LOSES the rest of Flipper while he's at it in order to become his very own solo guy for this one-off single. The cad! Recorded between Generic and Gone Fishin', it clearly features elements of both albums: you get the repetition of the former and the branch-out experimentalism of the latter. But, unfairly or not, this trebly 7" suffers by comparison in that it misses the messy intensity and beef of even the artiest Flipper material. And while sure, Loose/Lose was off doing his own thing here -- as evidenced by the thin vocals, lack of guitar/bass-roar, and the ticky-tacky drum machine that dominate both sides -- it's tough to deny that, at the end of the day, "thoughtful" rather than "hilariously bludgeoning" inevitably rates unfavorably when put up against BL's parent band, making the single more curio than anything else.

AND YET.

...At the same time, I oughta be clear that DUD this is not. Not HARDLY, son! For example: "What's Your Name" is a creepy-crawly, door-scratching nighttime take on standard Flipperisms, and "Waking to Sleep," well, shoot, that's a San Franciscan sludgepunk-whiteguy straight-up perpetrating some hip-hop in 1983! This record won't explode your ear-world (nor does it try to), but it's deserving of at least a cursory play by anyone even mildly curious about Flipper extracurriculars. Fusetron tends to have copies on hand, so those so inclined might as well give some bucks and give some listens. Thoughts?

Loop - Torched

(The Catalogue, 1988)

Fuggin' flexidiscs. Cheaply made, super skip-happy, easily destroyed. Thankfully, these flippity-floppity wrecks more often than not avoid the inclusion of exclusive material and have historically appeared packaged as bonus/sampler/gimmick freebies -- the MP3 giveaway of the pre-MP3 era, kinda -- otherwise the very existence of the format would be tough to defend. That said, Loop's (stuck into Brit magazine The Catalogue in late 1988), which falls into the "sampler" category, is hardly worth mentioning, as it's simply the album version of "Torched" pressed onto a one-sided disc. Good deal if you're some dink mag-reader in '88 getting exposed to the band for the first time, pretty much pointless for everyone else, both then and now... just pick up the full Fade Out album instead. Now, if it's an ESSENTIAL flexi you want, go out and find "It's a Gas" by Alfred E. Neuman, and friends and enemies alike will soon know you for the cut-up you truly are as those wonderful sounds issue forth from your speakers.

Loop - Spinning

(Head, 1987)

I always thought it was silly for a band like Loop – invested as it was in drawn-out and oft-metallic hypno-jams – to release 7”s, and apparently those guys agreed with me, since they only ever bothered to push three of the things out onto the market. The first of those, the “Spinning” single, is a good example of said silliness, since it adds a B-side (“Spinning Part Two”) that’s nothing more than an extended instrumental coda… why not just tack that onto the 12” version (which is “Spinning Part One”) and eliminate the fade-out/fade-in that brackets the side-break? Which might be what “Spinning (Spun Out)” on the World in Your Eyes singles comp is, but I honestly can’t tell if that’s the case or not; sounds like “Spun Out” might have some additional overdubs. Regardless, it’s a strong piece of Stooges-meet-Spacemen lunkhead-psych, with plenty of nicely-toasted swoops and wiggles in the guitar department. And now that Robert Hampson has finally overseen reissues – COMPREHENSIVE and TIDY reissues! – of Loop’s entire catalog (including ALL versions of “Spinning”), there isn’t any excuse for not owning the whole of this sledgehammering gunk… he’s made it easy for you goofs.

Lockgroove - Something To Give

(SharkAttack!, 2001)

Released between the Sleeping on the Elephant Fog and Calm Right Down albums, this mighty fine single actually shares more with the noisy Terrastock space-rock of the group’s debut Rewired EP than with the spaced-out (albeit still noise-inflected) pop-/rock-leanings of later days. “Something to Give” has the hazy, bluesy psych-stomp feel of very early Spacemen 3, or perhaps mid-’90s Brian Jonestown Massacre – but with a little more dynamism than either band typically threw out there on a per-song basis – while “Only One Time” makes a more frantic, clear-headed run through similar regions. A final blast of looped clubnoize points the way, I’m guessing, to the Compass splinter act.

Lockgroove doesn’t seem to exist anymore (breaking up after Calm Right Down, which includes serious Best Songs Of The 2000s contenders “Payin’ the Price” and “Execution Style”), but folks from that group and brother band Charlene are still a-strummin’ and a-thumpin’ and a-ooh’in’ and a-aah’in’ around the Boston area these days as Broken River Prophet, a worthy venture that displays much in the way of sonic connective tissue. See ’em, if leaving the house happens to be your bag! Heck, I did it and it involved a BUS.

DJ Lance Lockarm - Wouldn't It Be Ecstasy

(no label, 2005)

A bit of a mysterious one. In early 2005, the waning days of the mash-up fad, a handful of these white-label 45s became available for mailorder through Rough Trade. Laying the Beach Boys’ vocals for “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” (taken from the Pet Sounds Sessions box) over Spacemen 3’s “Ecstasy Symphony” drone, it doesn’t offer any particularly revelatory/amusing new angles on either song, as the best mash-ups did, but it’s still a creepily hypnotic luv-thingy that works more than well enough. And sure, there’s a little cheating afoot as the song’s creator employs some necessary pitch-shifting here and there on the Spacemen component, but who among us hasn’t sneakily pitch-shifted from time to time?

Don’t answer that.

On to the aforementioned mystery: There’s a stamp on the label that identifies the disc as “I Will Always Love You Forever” by Sonic Art Crew, but the now-dead website of DJ Lance Lockarm, where the song was called “Wouldn’t it Be Ecstasy,” always appeared to me to be the original source of the track. No idea whether Sonic Art Crew lifted it and then released this bootleg, or if the thing’s just mislabeled. Anyway, I’m officially giving Lance Lockarm the credit until I hear otherwise. Know the deal, you?

LMNOP - Forever Through The Sun

(LMNOP, 1985)

I’ve been reading the infamous “Babysue” for many years – their “Legalize Crime” cartoon resides on my fridge – and it’s always a little surprising to jump from the deliberately offensive, world-hating comics and essays of that magazine/site to LMNOP, its creator’s pleasant if off-kilter musical alter-ego. This debut single is a sincere, driving power-pop-athon (faint whiffs of “Dream Police” at times) filled with big guitars, LOUD drums, and some nice vocal harmonies… a seriously good song. These guys must’ve been really young at the time, given the vocals and the fresh-faced band photos on the back of the ’86 Elemen Opee Elpee, but “Forever Through the Sun” is a full-on winner that many a veteran group of la-la’ers would KILL to record. Impressive biz! So even if I’m far less fond of the more dated B, “Three Colon Oh Oh,” I can safely recommend this disc as both a getter and a keeper – Numero has apparently included the A-side on one of their comps, but the original is the way to go, as it comes packaged in a 12-page zine signed by the band. Bang for your buck!

Lilys - A Nanny In Manhattan

(Che, 1998)

After the pants people got “A Nanny in Manhattan” on the tube, Che decided it oughta get on the stick and put some product in the stores, hence this remixed single, complete with snazzy new sleeve and “as featured in Levi’s TV ad” sticker. Aside from a sonically-richer version of the accompanying LP re-released at the same time, the popularity of “Nanny” also gave the universe an insane Lilys lip-synch performance on UK television that should be watched again and again and again. Oh, and there are also a few B-sides in the same vein as Better spread across the formats (here it’s the excellent “The First Half Second”), all of which are on the American Services (For the Soon to Be Departed) EP.

I know I’ve been using the useless catch-all word “pop” to describe these last few Lilys singles, but I should make clear that this stuff is more gloriously weird than that term might imply: Wrapped up in the catchy melodies and concise track-lengths are unusual and unpredictable song structures, consistently surprising sounds, and oft-impenetrable lyrics. That the band managed to sneak out two albums on major-label subsidiaries (follow-up The 3 Way was on Sire) is a nifty feat, and theirs is a discography worth gathering.

Lilys - A Nanny In Manhattan

(Che, 1996)

Another hooky slice of slightly-skewed moddery from Lilys, and it deservedly ended up a British hit a few years down the road after Levi’s stuck it in an ad. I wouldn’t say that it’s significantly better than the rest of what the band was recording at the time, but it’s pretty obvious why this one, with its clanking, clattering kickiness, would have wide appeal when given the proper exposure. On the B side, the psychedelic, Eastern drone of “More Than That is Deserved” is an unfinished-sounding drag (rather like one of the lesser songs on Their Satanic Majesties Request) whose addition to the end of the reworked Better Can’t Make Your Life Better as album-closer was a mistake.

By the way, I must note that I have a mouse hiding out – or HOLING UP, if you will, HO HO HO – somewhere in my apartment. Not the worst development in the world, as I’m generally sympathetic to my fellow mammals, feeling a certain kinship with them, but I’m very annoyed by this dink’s habit of leaving feces all over my kitchen floor at night. Unless the mouse happens to read this and change his ways immediately, the penalty is gonna be death by neckbreaking. I’m harsh but fair.

Lilys - Which Studies The Past?

(Sub Pop, 1996)

The first Lilys 7” I ever plunked down for, and still top o’ the heap after all these years. Criminal that these two songs, released as a one-off for Sub Pop, aren’t available elsewhere, as they’re easily as good as, heck, not only anything on the stylistically-similar Better Can’t Make Your Life Better, but ANYTHING ELSE Lilys ever put out. The smashingly-titled “Welfare Murder Plot” covers a lotta ground in little time, lurching back and forth from slithery croon to chunky garage-pop before ending with a smooth-rockin’ coda. Nothing finer than the ultra-catchy B, though, a tight Nuggets-y head-shaker called “Baby’s a Dealer” that might be – yup! – the apex of this phase of the band’s existence. So why in tarnation is it buried on the flip of an obscure 7”?? Mysteries abound in this life of ours!

Lilys - Returns Every Morning

(Che, 1996)

Yeepers, where’d THIS come from?! Lilys ’96 abruptly says goodbye to gauze-pop and hello to mod-pop, stripping away the layers of dreamy guitars and sighing vocals and going for a sharper, more concise, pill-gulpin’ (yet still semi-psych) sound – the sound of FUN! “Returns Every Morning,” taken from the happy-go-peppy Better Can’t Make Your Life Better album, is a fine representation of the chiming, hazy-summer stomp-pop that Heasley would focus on for the second half of the ’90s, a carefree, kickass – if well-trod – regresso-path that has been shared but never bested by sonic cousins like the Asteroid Number Four, Minders, and, at times, Saturday Looks Good to Me. Zanier still is the Apples in Stereo cover “Touch the Water” – Heasley and Robert Schneider crossed musical piss-streams a few times mid-decade – which turns the Apples’ comparatively flat lo-fi rocker into a full-on bubblegum-garage basher. “Touch the Water” was left off of the initial version of the Better… LP but later included on the 1998 UK re-release, which was remixed and generally re-jiggered after the success of “A Nanny in Manhattan.”

Lilys - Tone Bender

(Summershine, 1993)

“Tone Bender” gets pulled from In the Presence of Nothing, a song that again offers up the massive, woozy Valentines churn of “February Fourteenth,” this time with a lead guitar that sounds a bit like a much-slowed “Only Shallow.” Another terrific, well-polished A-side. The rarity here is “Eskimo,” and while its relative sunniness is a slight tweak on the gauzy shoegaze formula, the track’s ponderous length eventually makes for a tiresome, impact-free slog. Zzzz.

By the way: The CD version of “Tone Bender,” which adds the two tracks from the debut 7”, holds the piss-me-off honor of being THE record that has most successfully eluded me through the years. In over a decade of searching I’ve never actually seen it in person, and the one time I did buy an affordable copy on eBay, the USPS managed to lose the package. When I finally do obtain it, I’m gonna staple the fuckin thing to my chest.

Lilys - February Fourteenth

(Slumberland, 1991)

Back in VHS days, fun-guy buddyboys Slumberland used to release insanely limited versions of their records in special handmade sleeves. Not sure how many of these they actually did, but I have 7”s of this sort by Lilys, Swirlies, and Black Tambourine (the “What Kind of Heaven Do You Want” EP was hand-colored as well, but I think that’s true of the entire run). This Lilys 45, of which 43 – !! – were made, comes in a white sleeve that has a photo pasted to its front and minimal info (band name, track titles, label address) written in purple marker on the back. The vinyl is identical to the standard “February Fourteenth” black-wax single, making the thing strictly collector-dink bait, but I maintain that the unique-artwork idea was – and is! – a fun one that I wouldn’t mind seeing present-day labels revisit. Why not?

Lilys - February Fourteenth

(Slumberland, 1991)

The first Lilys single is about as close an approximation of the uptempo bits on the Isn’t Anything-era MBV EPs as a guy’s gonna find, and in a still-growing sea of limp Shieldsian imitators, quality stuff like this is not to be sneered at. “February Fourteenth” in particular is heavier than the by-then chart-baiting Telescopes, crisper than the early BJM stabs at crudegaze, and more invested in maintaining a Rock undercurrent (see: drums) than even the contemporaneous My Bloody Valentine itself. Best American shoegaze record I’ve ever heard? Yup. Oddly enough, “Threw a Day,” which is absolutely the lesser of these two songs, is available on In the Presence of Nothing (as an unlisted track), while the pummeling A-side appears only here and as a bonus on the impossible-to-find Australian “Tone Bender” CDEP. If Kurt Heasley and/or Slumberland ever feels like fixing that situation, your iPod or Discman or whatever will be much the better for it.

Lil Bunnies - Lil Bunnies

(Moo-La-La, 1995)

Confrontational bunny-suited assholes from Sacramento who vomit forth rabbit-themed scumpunk disasters that include GG Allin-inspired originals (“Hop, Fight, & Fuck”) and Electric Eels covers (“Bunnies”). Yes, it all sounds like total ghetto-blast shit. And yes, the humor/annoyance factor is boosted by the cheesy air organ that gets pounded sub-Kingsmen style throughout the entire record. But for sheer fuck-you purity-of-concept it’s tough to beat these guys… please check out their lone LP (released in Italy?!) in order to experience the group’s ultimate expression of contempt/laziness/jokiness at an excruciatingly-long 33rpm. Perversely, it’s a must. GET.

Lightning Bolt - Conan

(Load, 2000)

Remember the Harvard Square Other Music? Good enough store, but it was a pretty crazy proposition from the get-go, what with Twisted Village, Newbury Comics, In Your Ear, CD Spins, HMV, Tower, and the post-Kenmore Planet Records all situated within several blocks of the place. Predictably short-lived, I think it’s now a restaurant hilariously named “OM,” and I heard that the dude who masterminded the whole folly lost his job over it. Anyway, I bought this Lightning Bolt tour single there back in the glory days of 2001 (for $2.99!), and I’ve always held it in rather low regard. I’m of the commonly-held opinion that there’s never been a Lightning Bolt record that comes anywhere close to the greatness of the band’s nutso concerts, and would heartily recommend their Power of Salad live DVD over any of the LPs, since it at least gives you the visual component. But this 7”? Thanks to length restrictions, it doesn’t have even the sustained, tightly-wound semi-insanity of the full-lengths, which is a problem when the sound is much like a sloppier, more manic version of some of the heavier Japanese groove-psych groups – Les Rallizes Denudes or Mainliner, say. “Conan” does generate a fair amount of excitement once it explodes into its motorcycle-guitar second half, but that certainly doesn’t justify the huge cash-wheelbarrows you’ll need to dump in order to pick up this rare’un. Unless you’re dumping that cash at MY feet, of course.

Lenola - Colonial 509

(Tappersize, 1994)

Aw heck. This isn’t my finest night. Because of a mishap involving an unstopped sink and my beloved Mach 3, I had to shave using a horrible plastic razor that I bought a few years ago on vacation as part of a $1.69 twelve-pack from a San Francisco bodega. Making matters worse, said beard-scrape was done in the dark after my bathroom light burnt out and I realized I didn’t have any replacement bulbs (the penlight I held in my left hand was quite a help, though). Now finished, the 99-cent “Men’s Choice” aftershave has hardly soothed my angered skin, and I sit here with a scowl gracing my burning skull.

All of that makes my vivid memories of transporting this very single across the country – broke – on a sweltering Greyhound bus (San Diego to Worcester!) rankle considerably less, even while its stomach-churn guitars make me wish I was safely in bed with the booze-bottle closed. Decent work here, though, Lenola guys. This debut release is bendy-note nausea-gaze pedal-box weirdness that stakes out what I suppose is a rough middle ground between Pavement and the Swirlies, particularly on the A, with B-side “Greedo” tending towards the latter in its extended instrumental sections. Fairly gifted with melody, better stuff was to come once the band tightened up, “got normal,” and veered into Rev/Hopewell/Home country around the turn of the century (The Electric Tickle, etc.), but this one is certainly worth sniffing out on the cheap. An underrated group.

John Lennon - Jealous Guy

(Capitol, 1988)

The Imagine film was one of the earliest image-control projects from the Lennon Estate, and Yoko and co. cannily (but boringly) go the double A-side route with the release of an American “Jealous Guy” single lifted from the soundtrack. Whereas the Europeans had stuck the semi-headscratcher “Going Down on Love” on the B back in the early ’80s, the US gets the far more famous “Give Peace a Chance” for a full-on warm ’n’ fuzzy mini hits package. Hooray and all that, but there could hardly be a less interesting record twenty-plus years after the fact. Any person dumb enough to seek the thing out owns both songs many times over, and there isn’t anything in the artwork or packaging to make it desirable from even a collector-dummy perspective. Owning this does not reflect well on me.

John Lennnon - I'm Stepping Out

(Polydor, 1984)

Once more to the well! Here’s further doodly-doo from the archives, a partner/sequel of sorts to “Watching the Wheels” where John addresses the big-city bored-dude itch that comes along with his decision to squirrel himself away as a daddy for five years. It’s a stiff straight-rock-combo performance, clearly not intended to be a final take, but it’s strong enough as far as outtakes go (though maybe not worthy of release as a single). Yoko’s alien-croon funk come-on “Sleepless Night” adds little… beyond “Walking on Thin Ice,” the post-Double Fantasy years aren’t her most exciting musical period. Fashion commentary: the cover of this record reminds me once again that our friend John was bizarrely thin back in ’80. What was that about? Was he skiing the Bolivian slopes, wink-wink? HEY, SEARCH ME!