Learning the Zanzibars Twist in Limbabwe

Anyone familiar with Limbabwe Records knows the kind of bands in their roster. Zanzibars Twist is one of my favorites & probably at the more extreme edge of some extreme music. For those of you who don’t know Limbabwe, here’s a little history.

Limbabwe was a music label active in the first half of the 80s. Their first release was in May 1982, a cassette tape called "Vlaaikots". The last tapes/records came out in 1985. Only a short 3 year of existence, but a catalogue of 42 releases.

Limbabwe Records started in Venlo, a city of 70,000 in the south of The Netherlands on the German border. The town never was all that exciting but in the beginning of the 80s, their "underground culture" was very much alive.

In the late 60s, a small but very active group of local hippies managed to get recognized by the city council & have a building at their disposal for cultural needs. They organized concerts & other artistic events. They built rehearsing space with PA (sound equipment) & after some time even a recording studio. The building was given the name OOC…Open Ontmoetings Centrum (Open Meeting Center). The OOC formed an important base for what came out of the next generation.

In 1980 a house in the center of Venlo was taken over as a local squat. This became Martinusstraat 24, or in popular scene language "de Martinusstraat". De Martinusstraat was in the town center & soon had a rehearsing space. Because of that it became a hang out of many musicians & bands. A group of people from de Martinusstraat began organizing cultural events under the name "Bauplatz". The group was allotted some space in the local OOC for their activities. Some of the original founders of OOC were opposed to the young radicals, but OOC was an Open Meeting Center & open means for everybody.

Bauplatz started to regularly hold events, art shows & concerts, every Sunday evening at OOC. This is about when Limbabwe came into existence. As the interest in the arts grew, the music scene in Venlo grew equally. Matski, who started Limbabwe, went around to rehearsing spaces, basements, back rooms, & squats with a tape recorder to register the "sound of Venlo". The sound was very diverse, from very industrial noise to ultra jazz to fast punk. These first recording sessions yielded Limbabwe’s first release Vlaaikots (Vlaai is a kind of local cake, kots is puke…so 'Cakepuke').

The tape was the first of its kind, representing the music that was happening in Venlo at that time. The tape was a success & received attention of the national press. Many tapes & records of bands followed. Venlo was in its most creative period ever. Art nights with industrial, punk rock, poetry, & paintings. A noted German music magazine declared Venlo "The New York of Europe" at that time. The front basement room of de Martinusstraat squat became the Limbabwe space. From there they produced, administrated, & distributed their products. Their roster included the trashy hardcore band Pandemonium, the trash rock band Oh’ Dev, the free-funk band Zoo, & many more.

Zanzibars Twist was a regular at Limbabwe. They released four cassettes on Limbabwe:

Never Mind the Bollocks (Limbabwe 7) 1982;

Zanzibars Twist Brings You Your Alltime Favourites (Limbabwe 9) 1982;

NRC By Bus (Limbabwe 17) - a 'live at NRC Amsterdam' recording 1983

Basta (Limbabwe 23) 1983.

I have posted Never Mind the Bollocks & Basta elsewhere, I don’t have NRC By Bus (hint-hint), & here is…

Zanzibars Twist – Zanzibars Twist Brings You Your Alltime Favourites cassette,
Limbabwe 09, 1982.
decryption code in comments

Side A –

Hey Yoe

16 Tons

It’s Going to Rain

Lust for Life

Side B –

Blue Spanish Eyes

Feel Allright

MacArthur Park

Je T'aime Mais Non Plus

Stop in the Name of Love / Ghostriders

Track order of tape does not match back cover of cassette.

Enjoy,

NØ

We're not in Kansas Anymore

Listening to some mid-80s 4AD recently, I came across these two 12” 45s while I was rooting through Dead Can Dance, Clan of Xymox, Xmal Deutschland, Dif Juz, & others. TWP were always one of my favorites & I’ve posted up a bit of their other material elsewhere. For your listening pleasure…

The Wolfgang Press – Kansas 12” 45, 4AD BAD902, 1989.
all decryption codes in comments

Side A –

Assassination K / Kanserous

Map Side –

Kansas

Scratch

Twister

The Wolfgang Press – Raintime / Bottom Drawer 12” 45, 4AD BAD907, 1989.

Watering Can Side –

Raintime (remix)

Umbrella Side –

Bottom Drawer (remix)

Slowtime

& stuck in one of the record sleeves was this CD5 maxi-single.

The Wolfgang Press – Mama Told Me not to Come, 4AD 9 40674-2, 1992.

Tracklist –

Mama Told Me not to Come (7”)

Mama Told Me not to Come (Go Back)

Birmingham (7”)

Birmingham to Jerusalem (Claudia Fontaine – backing vocals on both “Birmingham”s)

Mama Told Me not to Come (Up All Night)

Enjoy,

NØ

The Return of the Hifi Killers

I first became aware of Electric Beatniks in 2007. Someone hooked me up with their self-titled album released on Saftkugler Unlimited. I have played their off-kilter masterpiece many times since then, waiting anxiously for more crazy Beatnik sounds. In late 2011 the Beatniks started posting up Cover of the Month tunes every month or so on their website, a total of eight cover tunes as only EB could imagine them. Then March of last year they released their sophomore release Our Insignificance Has Always Been Our Greatest Strength on RDS. I was listening to it the other day & realized that a lot of you may not be familiar with their terrific style. Decided to post up their self-titled first release here.

Wolfgang Hagedorn & Raouf Khanfir first played music together in the noise-rock band Hifi-Killers. After the group disbanded in 1997 Hagedorn along with Michael Lückner (alias Digital Jockey) co-founded Computerjockeys (who scored the international hit "Ping Pong" ). Khanfir formed Man vs. Nature (who played an obscure trashy version of the sounds à la Captain Beefheart meets the Butthole Surfers that they called "pig jazz"). In 2007 Hagedorn had some music without words & Khanfir some words without music. They once more got together, became The Mites, then shortly changed their name to Electric Beatniks. That name is very well represented by their music…beatnik music gone electronic. It’s dance music from a different perhaps parallel universe. It’s got a lot of weird sounds, samples, & bits of vocals done up on guitar & synthesizer. Hagedorn is a proponent of fuzzy post-punk guitar playing influenced by Link Wray & 70s Soul sounds. Khanfir works the synthesizer & provides vocals, howling, screaming, vocalizing through various pitch shifters, delays, & distortion. His style of undistorted singing leans heavily toward Shane MacGowan, Tom Waits, Mark E. Smith, David Thomas, & Gibby Haynes.

Electric Beatniks – self-titled, Saftkugler Unlimited, 2007.
decryption code in comments

Tracklist –

Beatnik Stomp

Loop Lu

Michaux

Hands

Hellride

Bassman

I Love My Insects

Electric Birds

Me & My Furniture

Steal What You Need

Electric Island

bonus cover of the month tracks –

Romeo (Wipers cover – Nov. 2011)

Hound Dog (Elvis cover – Jan. 2012)

Superbad (James Brown cover – March 2012)

Let’s Lynch the Landlord (Dead Kennedys cover – April 2012)

Life is Strange (Tall Dwarfs cover – May 2012)

Money (Sonics cover – June 2012)

Bonnie & Clyde (Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot cover – July 2012)

Touch Me, I’m Sick (Mudhoney cover – Aug. 2012)

plus one from their latest –

Marriage Bureau

Enjoy & snap those fingers Daddy-Ø,

NØ

Not Too Tough to Die

Thomas Erdelyi (born Erdélyi Tamás on January 29, 1952), known to most of the world by his stage name Tommy Ramone, drummer for the Ramones, has succumbed to bile duct cancer. He was the last 'original' Ramone (although he was 'originally' their manager & Joey was the drummer, it soon became obvious that Joey couldn’t keep up with the band's every increasing tempo).

All I can say is, hang tough Marky & to Tommy…R.I.P.

I Wanna be Your Boyfriend – written by Tommy Ramone.

To the band of ‘brothers’ in Rock’n’Roll Paradise,

NØ

What's Playing on Jack Ruby's Hi-Fi?

Here are some mellow Jamaican sounds to ease us into the week-end. Mixed by the great Lawrence "Jack Ruby" Lindo, prolific Jamaican roots producer who worked with Winston "Burning Spear" Rodney on many of his greatest releases (things like 1975s Marcus Garvey, mixed at Joe Gibb’s Studio). Jack Ruby’s work has been featured in the Deep Roots Music BBC documentary as well as in the movie Rockers. This release was recorded in 1980 & released the following year. Lindo died in 1989.

This release features a great cast of players: Bertram "Ranchie" McLean, Earl "Chinna" Smith, & Tony Chin – guitars; Aston "Family Man" Barrett & Robbie Shakespeare – bass; Bernard Harvey, Earl "Wire" Lindo, & Tyrone Downie – keyboards; Herman Marquis, Dirty Harry, & Tommy McCook – saxophones; Don D Junior – trombone; Bobby Ellis – trumpet; Carlton Samuels – flute; Uziah "Sticky" Thompson – percussion; & Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace – drums.

Recorded at Jack Ruby’s Studios, mixed at King Tubby’s Studios.

Produced by Dub Organizer & Jack Ruby.

Various – Jack Ruby Hi-Fi, Clappers Records CLPS-1981, 1981.
decryption code in comments

Side 1 –

Peace Time – Ken Booth

Khomeni Skank – The Iranian Students

Hypocrites – Earth Last Messengers

Brezinsky Dub – The Black Disciples

Side 2 –

Better Must Come – Lenox Miller

Jah Coller Speaks His Mind – Jah Coller

Jail House Free – The Revealers

Rikers Island Dub – Crucial All Stars

bonus track - Peace Time (G. Corp remix)

Sparka spliff,

NØ

I Feel so Disconnected

I was working on getting more of the artists/releases from the Nurse With Wound list. That made me realize that I hadn’t posted any NWW for a while. Decided to post up this collaboration between ferocious British electronics experts NWW & phenomenal Krautrock icons Faust.

Legend has it that Steven Stapleton was so impressed by Faust that he travelled to Faust's headquarters at Wumme (only to find that they were off on tour at the time). So a collaboration between the two groups is not such an unforeseen idea. Here we a line-up featuring Zappi Diermaier, Steven Stapleton, Jean-Herve Peron, Colin Potter, & Amaury Cambuzat.

Disconnected starts right off with absolute sonic majesty featuring the hypnotic rhythms of "Lass Mich". The initial psychedelic vibrancy of "Lass Mich" is redolent of the Faust crew. The material sounds like it could have come from the classic recording sessions at Wumme, the band sounding as strong here as in their youth. Diermaier's percussion is full of raw energy combined with well-refined precision.

It's not long before the far-flung concrète machinations of NWW take hold of the album's sonic make-up. The album's title track is an ethereal drone piece with time-stretched vocals, loaded with tension & a jarringly discordant conglomeration of organic & synthetic tones. There are many times when the music is unmistakably Stapleton & Potter but it would be wrong to suggest that they are the main drive behind the sound. Faust  bring their fair share to the mix. Peron's bass on "It will Take Time" is a simple two-note refrain but it resonates with mammoth power.

The symbiosis between the two groups seems to comes naturally. At many times it is hard to tell where one band begins & the other ends. Any Nurse With Wound fans who have not ventured into the world of Faust should be inspired by this to go out & explore the jaw dropping back catalogue amassed by the group. Equally, curious Faust fans should pick up on Steven Stapleton's work on the strength of Disconnected.

There have been several versions of this title released. The original release featured only the first four tracks. There have been several later releases with four additional songs, three from Faust (Chemiin Est le Bon, What Turns You On?, & The Nog-Nog Wag-Wag Thing) & one NWW tune (Fine Writin' [for Lil' Fishy]).

The limited edition that I’m featuring here was issued in a run of 500 copies containing an extra audio track (track 6 - "Hard Rain"). The track titled "Silence" (track 5) is in fact just silence. There is no difference between the packaging of the limited edition & the regular edition. The bonus tracks are not listed on the tracklist but are mentioned on a sticker attached to the shrink wrap.

Faust / Nurse With Wound – Disconnected (limited edition), Art-errorist D/DIS1/07, 2007.
decryption code in comments

Tracklist –

Lass Mich (additional vocals – Diana Rogerson)

Disconnected

Tu M’entends (additional vocals – Diana Rogerson)

It Will Take Time

& two extra tracks

Silence

Hard Rain

Enjoy,

NØ

Cleveland Rawks

I hop in my Dusk Blue 1969 Chevy Nova SS, drive down from The Eddy & cruise west on good old Route 6 (you'll find it kinda parallel to Route 322 [David Thomas' favorite highway…see lyrics from ''Slow Walking Daddy'' below] after Meadville).

"I love that highway, US 322...yeah-yeah-yeah,
yeah... yeah..."

"I love that road,

I love the way it yields to me.
It sorta breathes & whispers out my name...
...that's how it feels.
I love that highway, US 322...yeah-yeah-yeah,
yeah."

It's Thursday evening & I'm heading for Cleveland for the week-end (long). It's been five weeks & I need some live music, lively libations, & olive women (my preference). The 4^th of July is next week. I'm gonna smuggle back some fireworks (none of that 'safe & sane' bullshit wannabe fireworks…Ohio's got the 'unsafe & insane' kind…M80s…M100s…Cherry Bombs…Roman Candles of all calibers…Skyrockets that go BOOM!). I’m listening to V.U. on the cassette player, smoking some Cambodia Red my friend Steiner picked growing along the trail on one of his excursions into redacted KhmerRougeland & sent back to Pennsylvania along with this very cassette player & speakers I’m playing ''Sister Ray'' on right now (latest state-of-the-art from Japan, duty- & handling-free courtesy the United States Paramilitary Complex). I’m on my way to Cleveland. Cleveland rawks.

The late 60s – early 70s was a turbulent time in my life. I was living off the grid as a peacenik draft evader avoiding the genocidal  participation of my Mother Country in the Resistance War Against America in Vietnam since 1968. I briefly visited some friends in New York City before returning to San Francisco California until I wore out my anonymity factor, then I’d bounce across country to Albany New York then ditto to Scotts Bluff Nebraska, avoiding Federal Cossacks & awaiting hope-filled the cessation of stupidity in Southeast Asia. I knew that once the CIA-drug peddlers had worn out their 'welcome' in the heroin trade of the Golden Triangle they'd move on to newer & more lucrative drug venues (soon to be the Cocaine Fields of South America, then the Poppy Fields of Afghanistan, nowadays the Killing Fields of Old Mexico).

By 1970 the 'Vietnamization' policy of the Nixon Doctrine was slowing our involvement in Ho Chi Minhland & the American public's interest in the Evening News body count. After Scotts Bluff had pulled up the welcome mat, I moved back to my old home turf in northwestern Pennsylvania & lived the quiet bucolic country life along the outer reaches of the Appalachian Trail, hiding out at various safe houses at Shipman's Eddy on the Allegheny River or the old Mole country estate on Brown Run. I lived beneath the radar for the most part, sojourning out only for LSD shipments from the Eastern Brotherhood in nearby New York State (Buffalo & beyond stories another time) or for occasional doses of music in nearby Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland had always been a prime target for my music adventures. Premiere venues like The Agora Ballroom to smaller clubs like LeCave had hosted bands as varied as Jimi Hendrix to The Velvet Underground, Amboy Dukes to The Fugs. If any one place could be credited with my eclectic (insane) taste in music, more than San Francisco or New York City, was the grungy tattered wasteland that was Cleveland. This is the story of that desperate city & the greatest scum bags who ever lived there. Cleveland lost 23.6 percent of its population in the 1970s. Mob violence in the form of car bombs earned it the title "Bomb City, U.S.A.". The city went into default. Yet, the music scene of Cleveland of that era has become part of rock 'n' roll legend. Cleveland in the 70s sits alongside New York & London as a cultural center for a new sound that changed the course of music.

I had to be extremely careful in Cleveland, as I had briefly come to the attention of the authorities at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in early 1968 (pre-Federal violation) when I was transporting several pounds of pure mescaline sulfate from the west coast back to Pennsylvania. I had somehow pruriently involved myself in a mile-high scenario with one of the on-board flight attendants (they were called stewardesses in those ancient times) & we had unwisely smoked a bit of chronic I had with me (for strictly personal use) while basking in post-coital bliss in the airplane's 1^st Class restroom. Although I walked away unfettered (they never found the herb as I had a plan [not going into anal details here, if you want, look it up in Henri Charrière's great memoir Papillon] & they had no clue at the time what my [grandly industrial sized] talcum powder was) I was nevertheless put on 'The List'.

But the shear awesomeness of the early-to-mid 70s Cleveland underground music scene was worth any additional caution/paranoia I might need to endure. Also, although the scene has since achieved national notoriety & legendary status, at that time the bands were confronted with a simple problem: nowhere to play. So a happening venue in those days was likely to be any one of a handful of dive bars where few people went, where the owner was looking to do anything to get people in. There was a short list of places to see the really freshest Cleveland sound: Clockwork Orange; Viking Saloon (where the Extermination Nights shows were held); Piccadilly; Governor’s Chateau; & later Pirate’s Cove; & Real World.

On any given night at any of the above mentioned clubs you would run into the likes of: Lux Interior & Nick Knox (Electric Eels drummer) later of The Cramps; Stiv Bators & Cheetah Chrome (Rocket from the Tombs & Dead Boys); Peter Laughner (Friction, Rocket from the Tombs & Pere Ubu); Anton Fier (Friction & Pere Ubu) later The Lounge Lizards, The Feelies, The Golden Palominos; all watching bands like Electric Eels, Mirrors, & The Styrenes go through their paces.

What exactly happened in Cleveland during the early 70s to make it such an insanely creative spot? Most people think of those years as a bit of a black hole for outsider rock 'n' roll. What was so different in Cleveland? Maybe two disparate things.

One: The Cleveland youth were the Ghoulardi kids. Ghoulardi was a fictional character invented & portrayed by disc jockey, voice announcer, & actor Ernie Anderson as the host of late night Shock Theater at WJW-TV, Channel 8, in Cleveland, Ohio. Though he was only on from January 13, 1963 through December 16, 1966, his influence on the musical youth of Cleveland is immeasurable. Shock Theater featured "B" horror & sci-fi films. It's been suggested by numerous scenesters that the Cleveland/Akron underground sights & sounds were in many ways attributable in large part to Ghoulardi's influence.

Two: The fact that The Velvet Underground played there a total of fourteen times was equally significant. Don't dismiss the power of The Velvets on the Cleveland underground mindset. It was a big deal. It changed many people's lives. Every band in Cleveland in the early 70s could play "Foggy Notion". Bands from Akron would play "Sweet Jane". Every band, Rocket from the Tombs, The Dead Boys, Styrenes, Pere Ubu. Peter Laughner, Electric Eels, the Pagans, Mirrors all could play "Foggy Notion". All the Akronites from Devo to Tin Huey could play "Sweet Jane".

Poet Charlotte Pressler, Laughner’s wife, described it best in her piece, "Those Were Different Times."
"You can ask, also, why they all turned to rock 'n' roll. Most of these people were not natural musicians. Peter perhaps was, and Albert Dennis, and Scott Krauss; but John Morton and David Thomas and Allen Ravenstine and Jaime Klimek would probably have done something else, if there had been anything else for them to do. One can ask why there wasn't; why rock 'n' roll seemed to be the only choice.

"I would like to know too the source of the deep rage that runs through this story like a razor-edged wire. It was a desperate, stubborn refusal of the world, a total rejection; the kind of thing that once drove men into the desert, but our desert was the Flats. Remember that the people who did this music had an uncompromising stance that gave them no way up and no way out. It was the inward-turning, defiant stance of a beleaguered few who felt themselves to be outside music, beneath media attention, and without hope of an audience. It seems that the years from 1974 to 1978 (really 1968-1978) in Cleveland were a flash point, a quick and brilliant explosion, even epochal, but over with and done. No amount of nostalgia can bring those years back; they were different times. Still, I can't imagine living any other way than the way I learned to live in Cleveland during those years. We found it hard, in 1975, to imagine that anyone would live to see the year 2000. It's not that hard to imagine it now. What's become hard to imagine - but then why would we want to recapture it? - is the timeless, frozen, quality of life as we lived it in 1975, in the terminal landscape of Cleveland, with our drivenness, our rage, and our dreams of breaking through."

Those Were Different Times is the name of this compilation. This is a compilation of very rough demos from three Cleveland bands of the period: Mirrors; Electric Eels; & The Styrenes. It was compiled by Paul Marotta, who played with all three bands at some point, from his personal tape collection. Most of the songs are from rehearsals, although there are 3 or 4 from one of the infamous Extermination Nights at the Viking
Saloon.

Various – Those Were Different Times: Cleveland 1972 – 1976 3x10", Scat Records scat45, 1997.
all decryption codes in comments

Side A –

Annie

How Could I

You Love Me

Living Without You

Beaver Girls

Side B –

Frustration

Hands in My Pocket

Sweet Refrain

I’m Going to Wyoming

We’ll See – Mirrors

Side C –

Safety Week

Wreck & Roll

Splitterty Splat

Stucco

Circus Highlights (The Men from UNCLE)

Now

Side D –

You Crummy Fags

Mustard (live)

The Big "O" (live)

No Nonsense (live)

Spinach Blasters (live)

Flapping Jets – Electric Eels

Side E –

Thirtyfour

Draw the Curtain

Mr. Crab

You’re Trash

Side F –

Pleasure Boating

Grey Haired Rats

Nineteen Sixtyseven – The Styrenes

Thought I’d include some additional music from the Cleveland scene. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected President. He took office in January 1977 & on January 21, 1977 he made good on one of his campaign promises & granted cross-the-board amnesty to all Vietnam era War Resisters. It was time for this boy to re-surface…

Various – Cleveland Confidential, Terminal Records TERM06, 1982.

Side A –

Woman Haters – Cry 816

Severe – Her Name was Jane

Menthol Wars – Ever Lower Manhattan

Defnics – Suicide Trip

The Dark – I Can Wait

The Styrenes – Jaguar Ride

Invisibles – In New York

Lab Rats – Cover Song End of Side 1

Side B –

Keith Matic – I Really Want to Stay (Lost in Rome)

Jazz Destroyers – Love Meant to Die

Offbeats – I’m Confused

Pagans – Boy Can I Dance Good

Red Decade – Scars of Lust

John Lovsin – Key of E

Easter Monkeys – Cheap Heroin

 

Die Electric Eels – Agitated/ Cyclotron 7'', Rough Trade RT008, 1978.

Side A – Agitated

Side B – Cyclotron

 

X______X (Ex-Blank-Ex…fill in any word you like in the blank) formed in 1978. It’s members included six key Cleveland underground musicians: Dave E. McManus ex-Electric Eels – vocals; John Morton ex-Electric Eels - guitar & vocals; Andrew Klimek (younger brother of Jamie Klimek of Mirrors) – guitar; Jim Ellis (publisher of CLE Magazine - "the best in local music since 1977") - bass; Michael Weldon ex-Mirrors – drums; & Anton Fier ex-Friction & Styrenes - drums. Their music is a mix of underground music & performance art that picked up where Electric Eels left off. The band often played sets of conceptual pieces (one song required members to strike a pose for 60 seconds, another included power tools as musical instruments), as well as Eels songs as well as the band's own brand of art-punk. They also sadly marked an end to Cleveland's mid-70s underground scene. The band lasted until 1979. X______X broke up when most of its members moved to New York to pursue various projects: Klimeyk played in avant-garde group Red Dark Sweet; Fier played in the New Jersey group the Feelies & NY's Lounge Lizards before forming the Golden Palominos; Weldon pursued a publishing career (the Ghoulardi influenced Psychotronic Video magazine) ; Morton pursued art. Ellis & Dave E. stayed in Cleveland & started the noise group Jazz Destroyers. During their existence, the band released two 45s on Drome Records, a subsidiary of the Cleveland record store of the same name (Hideo's Discodrome or "The Drome" in Cleveland Heights where Jim Ellis worked.).

X__X – A / You’re Full of Shit 7", Drome Drome DR-2, 1979.

Side A – A

Side B – You’re Full of Shit

Resonance in the Netherlands released Another Nail in the Coffin in 1991 LP under the band name The Mirrors without the band's approval. Reach Out International re=released most of that material & previously unreleased & live tracks in 2004.

Mirrors – Another Nail in the ^Remodeled Coffin,
Reach Out International Records AUSCD 8290, 2004.

Tracklist –

Another Nail in the Coffin

Follow that Blonde

Every Day

I’m the One

I Think I’m Falling

How Could I

If I Swear

I Got a Need

I Love Joan

To Do We Do

Swept Away

Who Greased the Girl

Good to Me

Petits Fours

Halt Amphigory

& I Saw You

Girls Will be Girls

We’re on Our Way Home

Cindy & Kathy

The Big Lie

Penthouse Legend

If I Swear (Alternate take)

I’ve Been Down

Who Greased the Girl

You Me Love

Everything Near Me

Peter Laughner was a vital member along with David Thomas of Rocket from the Tombs & Pere Ubu as guitarist & vocalist. Laughner died from acute pancreatitis at the ripe old age of 24. In 1994, Tim Kerr’s Tim/Kerr label released Take the Guitar Player for a Ride, a 15 track compilation drawn from home-tapes Laughner had recorded. This compilation had limited sales appeal & has since gone out of print.

Peter Laughner (& friends) – Take the Guitar for a Ride 2x LP,
Tim/Kerr Records TK9312043, 1994.

Side A –

Baudelaire

Rock it Down

Sylvia Plath

In the Bar

Cinderella Backstreet

Side B -

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Lullaby

Pledging My Time

Visions of Johanna

Side C –

Amphetamine

Life Stinks

Don’t Take Your Love Away (Friction)

Calvary Cross (Friction)

Side D –

What Love Is (Rocket from the Tombs)

Ain’t it Fun (Rocket from the Tombs

Dear Richard (Friction)

Baby’s on Fire (The Finns)

Me & the Devil

Pagans were probably the successors to The Dead Boys after Stiv & Co. hotfooted it off to NYC.

Pagans – Dead End America / Little Black Egg 7", Drome DR7, 1979.

Side A – Dead End America

Side B – Little Black Egg
1000 made of the original with pink label, repress has yellow label.

Pagans – Street Where Nobody Lives, Resonance 33-8921, 1989.

Side 1 –

Street Where Nobody Lives
Real World (1979)
Don’t Leave Me Alone
Eyes of Satan
Haven’t Got the Time
She’s a Cadaver
Give Up (live)

Side 2 -
Boy Can I Dance Good
What’s this Shit Called Love?
Dead End America
I Juvenile
I Don’t Understand
Not Now, No Way
Six & Change


Enjoy,
NØ

UPDATE: After a comment from an anonymous visitor impugning the veracity of some of my assertions & my favoritism of rock stars as opposed to "REAL" bands, I am adding a few other Cleveland classics that I left out.

Agitated – Go Blue, Go Die 7" EP, Smog Veil Records SV39EP, 2002.

Recorded spring 1983 in Cleveland

Side A –

Living like Garbage

& Then There Were None

In This Room

Dead Warmed Over

I Got a Right (Stooges cover)

Go Blue, Go Die

Side B –

Paralysis

Beat the Race

Blissful Ignorance is Preferable

No One’s Right

Iron Fist (Motörhead cover)

Almost Straight Edge

Offbeats – Why Do You Hang Out? 7" EP, OOPS! Records OOP-002, 1983.

their best, in my opinion

Smells Like Fun Side –

In a Rush

Maybe

Nothing for Me

Getting Fat

OOPS! Side –

Why Do You Hang Out?

Who the Fuck Do You Think You Are?

Look at Them Go

Go Away

Offbeats – Dumb Looks Still Free, Smog Veil Records SV26LP, 2001.

25 song compilation from Cleveland proto-punk band Offbeats containing much of their material

Side A –

Why Do You Hang Out?

Hey Mate Ahoy

TKO

Look at Them Go / Go Away

Child Abuse

Maybe

Ned

In a Rush

Who the Fuck Do You Think You Are?

Gib Shanley Dick

Last Day

Side B –

Seven Days

Learning

Shit My Pants

Sad

Beyond Reckoning

Happiness

Ain’t This the Life?

Bullshit Now

The Mets

Do You Know Bob Sablack?

My Dilemma

Nothing Will Ever Be the Same

Milk & Cookies

Fuck You Doug

Enjoy some more rawkin' Cleveland,

NØ

Short Circuited at the Circus

Got a request from a visitor for a Various Artists compilation over on the High Priests of Electronic Dub post. While I was looking through VA stuff, once again realized I had been overlooking this category. I posted a couple, then got side tracked as usual. Here’s another one from the stack. Short Circuit - Live at the Electric Circus from 1978.

This 10" mini-LP was released to mark the closing of the Electric Circus, Collyhurst Street (off Rochdale Road), Manchester, England (since demolished). The Electric Circus punk venue in Manchester was scheduled to close. The reason being that Manchester Council officials deemed the club unsafe unless a major refurbishing was carried out. Due to lack of funds, their time had run out. October 1 & 2, 1977 were its final two nights. It was the weekend that all Manchester youth dreaded. The Circus, being charitable to the very end, donated the receipts from the club's closing nights to benefit cancer research. To capture the excitement of this two day event, the Virgin Sound Mobile recording studio was on hand to catch every moment on tape, for a (super-truncated) recording that would come out the next year under the title Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus.

 

The album was originally only available on 10" blue, black, or yellow vinyl. All of the performances on the 10" are soundboard recordings made on October 2, 1977. A printed insert sleeve contains a history of The Electric Circus venue & line-ups of the bands featured on the EP. Some copies included a dark blue promotional poster (folded in six segments) that contained a circuit diagram, band & location details, with the promotional blurb:
     "First 5,000 colour pressed on fashionable blue vinyl. Electric Circus. In handy shoplifting size. 10" for £2.99. Out now on Virgin VCL5003"

This was re-released by Virgin on CD in 1991.

Short Circuit - Live at the Electric Circus 10", Virgin UK VCL5003, 1978.
all decryption codes in comments

Side One –

Stepping Out - The Fall

(You Never See a Nipple in the) Daily Express - John Cooper Clarke

At a Later Date - Joy Division

Persecution Complex - The Drones

Side Two –

Makka Splaff (The Colly Man) - Steel Pulse

I Married a Monster from Outer Space - John Cooper Clarke

Last Orders - The Fall

Time's Up - Buzzcocks

Some copies included a pink vinyl 7" version of John Dowie's "Another Close Shave".

The 7" placement was totally random. It was included with blue, black, or even orange promo copies. Some of these randomly had an orange sticker to say there was an included 7". Some had no sticker but still included the 7". Some had a full promo poster with or without the 7". It was utterly random. The CD re-released did not include the Dowie songs.

John Dowie – Another Close Shave 7" EP, Virgin VEP1004,1977.

Side One –

British Tourist

Naked Noolies in the Moonlight

I Don’t Want to be Your Amputee

Side Two –

Mew Wave

Jim Callaghan

Time Warp

Jonder, bet you never thought you’d find The Fall posted here.

NØ