Eugene Chadbourne - "I've Been Everywhere" (1988)

One of our perennial favorites here at The Pessimist Club, the good Dr. Chadbourne has a seemingly endless supply of fine albums to be discovered. This one from 1988 is no exception, coming from a time of great creative output for him, the late Eighties. This was the time of his collaboration with Camper Van Beethoven, "Camper Van Chadbourne", as well as the absolutely essential "Vermin Of The Blues" (available HERE).
A friend of mine just picked this (vinyl LP) up on a recent trip home to Philadelphia and we listened to it right away upon his return. It's the typically fried and wonderful psychedelic folk he's known for, interspersed with his (I think) grandmother's musings on being a young girl in Nazi Germany. Makes for a unique listening experience to say the least.
Also there is some Legendary Stardust Cowboy contained herein, though I can't tell if it's any more than samples of Paralyzed. The back cover states, somewhat cryptically, "The Legendary Stardust Cowboy would like to apologize for his tape recorder breaking down".

Anyway, after that first listen I brought the record home to digitize. The next morning my friend got called away for an emergency gig filling in on drums on some rock stars' tour (no names, haha).
So, this is for you, D. HERE it is.

(PS - It's been brought to my attention that you might have trouble with Track 10. If so, I've uploaded it separately HERE. Cheers.)

Tracks:
01. The Ring
02. It Takes Longer Saying Yes Than Saying No
03. You Still Live With Mom and Dad
04. The Liar Song
05. Too Damn Bad
06. Buck Owens Medley / My Heart Skips a Beat
07. We Keep the KKK In Line
08. The Mountain Men
09. Oil Platform
10. I've Been Everywhere
11. Neurologically Impaired Leaders

V/A - "Sudden Death" (1982 Smoke Seven)

Here's a nice little old SoCal comp I unearthed whilst preparing for a record fair a couple weeks ago. Hadn't listened to it in years, and looking at it I remembered how much fun the JFA version of War's Low Rider was. Plus it's got Redd Kross (prolly their first appearance with the 2 d's and the K), Sin 34 and Youth Gone Mad. Looking over the track selection, I smiled at the song Nuclear War. How quaint it was we used to worry about that. I put it on, loved it all over again so I did a nice 320 vinyl rip for y'all.
Back then this stuff got lumped into "hardcore", but it's basically great trashy punk rock.

Get it HERE.

Tracks:
01. Low Rider (JFA)
02. Guess What (JFA)
03. American Buttfuckers (JFA)
04. Only Love (Sin 34)
05. Nuclear War (Sin 34)
06. Who Needs Them (Sin 34)
07. America (Moral Decay)
08. TV News (Moral Decay)
09. Life Is Getting Faster (Crankshaft)
10. Massacre Killer (Crankshaft)
11. Twisted Cross (Sadist Faction)
12. Peace Corpse (Sadist Faction)
13. Rat Society (The Sins)
14. All Your Tomorrows (The Sins)
15. Sins Prayer (The Sins)
16. Back To the Bed (The Demented)
17. Deadly Game (The Demented)
18. How Can I Kill You (The Demented)
19. Tatum O'Tot and the Fried Vegetables (Redd Kross)
20. St. Lita Ford Blues (Redd Kross)
21. Ode To Darby (Youth Gone Mad)
22. Diaperhead (Youth Gone Mad)
23. Homo Mommy (Youth Gone Mad)
24. Linda Is a Monster (Naughty Women)
25. Jealousy (Naughty Women)
26. Phantom Citizen (Dead Youth)
27. Kern County (Dead Youth)
28. Radiation Fall Out (Dead Youth)

Years ago at a Pavement show at the Troc in Philadelphia, the guy who looks like Corey Feldman (or was it Corey Haim?) had this LP proudly displayed on his amp during the show. Then he held it up afterwards, showing us all his great find in case we hadn't noticed. Guess he scored it at the Record Exchange...

Yves Mourousi / Paul Hardcastle - Dix Neuf (Single 1985)

In 1985 I returned to France after 5 years to visit friends I had made there while ostensibly going to school. At the time, Paul Hardcastle's 19 was a massive hit in the States, and we all loved it. Everyone was going around stuttering N-N-N-N-Nineteen like retarded Max Headroom clones. I was not immune. When I got to Paris with some friends, we were quite surprised to hear it was a massive hit there as well. Except they were stuttering D-D-D-D-Dix Neuf. We fell out laughing every time we heard it, so naturally I bought the single. I don't think we thought about the larger ramifications of a French version of a Viet Nam war song. I mean, yeah they had their tussle in Indochine so it made more sense than, say, a German version. But couldn't they have their own song?
Whatever, who cares. It still makes me laugh. Sorta.

I think the song is the basic Paul Hardcastle track with French tacked on top. The awkward chorus remains in English ("Destruction of men in their prime / whose average age was nineteen" I mean, c'mon...)
For refresher's sake, I've also included the American original.
Get it HERE.

THE FALL - "The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall" (1984) [Vinyl Rip: 320 mp3 & FLAC]

So I thought I'd do a nice vinyl rip of this since the old Beggars Banquet CD is so crappy. Never mind the fact that some record company stooge decided to break up the album's perfect sequencing by putting the bonus tracks between the LP's sides; it just sounds thin and anemic. And yeah, I saw on the "unofficial Fall website" that they're doing a remaster soon. Or someday. But I have a mistrust of remasters. We'll have to wait and see.

I noticed through my sitemeter that lots of people were arriving on The Pessimist Club looking for this, but landed on the similarly titled video doc instead. Oh well, sorry guys. Hope you got the doc anyway, though!

I was quite stunned listening to these mp3s back-to-back with the CD I have in my iTunes. Sounds SO MUCH better. And my old vinyl is in surprisingly good shape. A bit crunchy at the start of the "Lay Chant", but that's it. Smooth sailing from there on in. I don't think I'd want to try this with my vinyl copies of "Grotesque" or "Dragnet", though. Those have always been my favorites. But this is my favorite of the Brix era (I just read in the MES autobiography that he hates the term "era". But I can't think of a better way to put it, so...)

And just to try something new, I uploaded a lossless FLAC version. I don't know much about FLACs; I just put all the settings on as high as they'd go (24 bit, etc). You guys'll have to let me know if you want FLACs in the future. Or WAV or AIFF. I don't mind doing 'em, it's no big whoop. But I'm not gonna bother if no buggers download 'em.

Get the 98MB 320 kbps mp3s HERE.
Get the 486MB FLACs HERE.
Front and back artwork included.

RIP Jim Carroll

No download here. Plenty bloggers have posted his (classic and necessary) "Catholic Boy" LP. Just enter "Jim Carroll" in the CaptainCrawl box up there and there's tons of hits.
Anyway, I was saddened to here of one of my literary hero's passing on Friday. I remember getting The Basketball Diaries at a boardwalk bookshop in Ocean City, NJ as a teenager. I read it all on the beach that day, laughing my ass off (and boiling like a lobster). Over the years I must have read it ten times. And despite the fact that I've lent it out, eagerly, to anyone interested, I still have that yellowed, frayed copy.
Jim Carroll spoke to me like no one else I had read up to that point. Not that I was a jock or anything (nor was he, just an amazing natural talent). Teachers, older friends and various mentors had tried to get me to read On the Road, but to me it sounded as archaic as Shakespeare. Reading Carroll was as easy and natural as hanging out on a street corner bullshitting with friends. And he fed my fascination with New York City which had started as a wee lad with Simon & Garfunkel. In fact, years later when I moved there, I moved into Carroll's neighborhood: Washington Heights. When friends came to visit me I'd spread my arms wide and proclaim, "This is Jim Carroll's 'hood!". Ok, I lived several blocks to the south; he actually lived in Inwood. But I lived closer to Inwood than Washington Heights proper. But fuck, close enough. It's all that skinny finger on the top of Manhattan when you look at a map. We rode the same 'A' Train.
When I'd go swimming in the Hudson (yup), I'd always recall his tales of swimming on the other side in the Harlem River. Thankfully, the ejections of raw sewage that he would time his dives between were long gone by then.

When the movie came out I was gonna see it but never did. Still haven't. I remember talking with a friend about it back then and she said it was too depressing. I said, "what? It's not funny?". She looked at me like I was talking about something else entirely. So if you've never read it, I highly recommend it. Maybe it would be different for me if I just read it now rather than when I was a teenager, but I don't know. Good writing is good writing is good.
And that fucker could write.

Maybe I'll see if I can DL that movie somewhere...