Black Flag – Damaged

First snow of the year, the day after Thanksgiving.  Only an inch, but I like how it signals the start of another season.

My coffee mug has served me very well indeed.

My dog enjoys recycling, except he chews the cans up into tiny razor sharp pieces that cover the floor.

It’s been quite a while since I added to my Top Ten All Time category, so here’s another one.  Is there really any doubt on this one?  I’m positive this is still available from here, http://www.sstsuperstore.com/ for $9 bucks on vinyl, which is a good price by today’s standards.  I haven’t figured out why the Tshirts are going for $24 though.  I know I’m committing a sin by posting this, since it’s still available, but an angel of the punk rock God came to me in a vision and has sent me on a mission to post this.  In case the forces of evil foil my mission from God check here http://digitalmeltd0wn.blogspot.com/2008/09/black-flag-damaged.html (this was a really good read), here http://canyoufeelthisenergyhcandpunk.blogspot.com/2008/09/black-flag-damaged.html , and here http://ya-cant-go-home.blogspot.com/2008/09/trax-01-rise-above-02-spray-paint-03.html , just to name a few of the blogs that have this available for you.  One discussion that is common among fans of the band is which singer was the best and picking this album as a top ten does not mean I’m picking Henry as my favorite.  I think this album just has the entire band at their best.  To be honest with you I like every singer this band has had and each one had their own style to contribute to the mix.  Besides my favorite member of the band is the only one I’ve met, Chuck.  Very trippy guy but he seemed prettty cool and easy to talk to.  I met him at a show in Northridge but I can’t remember what bands were playing.  There is so much Black Flag out there for you to check out and as I said you can still get all their stuff from SST, but I did want to single out a couple of posts worth checking out.  First off, Erich some time ago posted this rare little gem, http://www.goodbadmusic.com/2006/09/22/black-flag-thirsty-and-miserable-7-aka-licorice-pizza-sst-usa-1981/ .  It stood out for me because this was one of the better versions of one of my favorite tunes.  Jason recently posted this nice early live set, http://loresviscera.blogspot.com/2008/11/black-flag.html.  A good reminder of how good this band was throughout their history.  Anyway I played the hell out of this album over the years and was surprised it played all the way through while I was ripping it.  My favorite tune was always What I See, but Rise Above comes in a close second.  Let me know what yall think.

EDIT: Of course the links are long gone, don’t be that guy, go buy the record.

I dorked out a little bit and decided it would be interesting to see if I could come up with live versions of all the songs off the album.  If I was going to do it right, which I didn’t, I would have downloaded a bunch of live sets that are available as torrents and sifted through those to get all the tunes from the album.  Being the lazy man that I am, I just went to Youtube, used the Vdownloader and took what I could find there.  The sad part of that is that on some tunes, there wasn’t a lot of choices, so I just had to take what I could get to round out the set.  The neat thing about it though is that I ended up a good variety as far as the singers were concerned, with the exception of Chavo I think.  Like I said I dorked out and the sound quality for the most part sucks, but it was fun.

EDIT:  Sad those rips are gone…can’t find the whole record in one vid on fucked tube, but this live version of Rise Above is quite the gem…

Rendevous In Armenia

 It’s been kind of dead around the site lately, so I’m figuring people have already started their vacations and this post, the first of my second year of doing this, will not get read.  Or maybe the site just sucks and those who hadn’t figured it out from the start have finally done so.  🙂  Last week was pretty busy for me, training some of my clients, working at an oil field wharehouse.  Those parts I’m prepping are called “polish rod clamps” and they are actually a pretty important part of sucking oil out of the ground. If you didn’t already know, I (and Kim too) work with people with disabilities, where I help out with the employment aspect of their lives.  Kind of have to be a jack of all trades with what I do, or least a quick learner so I can show my clients what the hell is going on.  Had me pretty wiped out last week and glad that this week is a short one.  With Thanksgiving being tomorrow, I hope yall have lot’s to be thankful for, I know I do, and you take a little bit of time to forget about all the bullshit going on in your lives and the rest of the world.

 This one will not interest anyone, or at least I would be surprised if it did, but never the less here it is.  I am one half Armenian, but that’s pretty much all I have is some blood.  The rest being Native American, French, German and Czech.  A mutt and a hybrid brother.  No family, no culture, no language, and no history except what I’ve read.  This record is the sum total of my Armenian heritage and I’m actually content with that.  I had a few Armenian friends in high school and with Burbank being next door to Glendale (the largest population of Armenians outside of Armenia) I’ve met my fair share.  As a group of people, no better or worse than anyone else, although they share some things in common with Jews and Gypsies (Romany), in that they have been spread by historical circumstances all over the world.  For Jews it’s called diaspora, but I don’t know if Armenians have a word for it.  I got a hard time from my friends for being Armenian, but no harder than they had it for being whatever the hell they were.  I really have no ties that side anyway and is with many cultures half breeds are frowned upon.  The music on the other hand is some pretty cool stuff.  Folk music in general, for me, is just cool because it is artistic expression that has no ties to the corporate side of music and is therefore fairly uncontaminated.  Emotion.  I think I’ll be doing some more folk type stuff, like Greek and Native American on future posts.  There used to be a club in L.A., on Temple St., really close to where I grew up, called the Intersection with traditional dancing that used to play Greek, Armenian, Turkish and others from that general region, back in the 60’s and 70’s.  May still be there from all I know.  My personal favorite was the Greek music and dance (and food).  Well I’ve written enough on a post that few if any will listen to.   If I had to pick a favorite tune it would be Dari Me Na.

Tamara (Folk Dance)

Gneega (To A Woman)

Halay (Armenian Soldiers Dance)

Voch Me Dzaleeg (No Flower Like You)

Sepastia Bar (Dance Of Sepastia)

Ka Deh Yes Em (Armenian Ballad)

Dari Me Na (It’s Been A Year)

Armenian Caucasian Dance

Ooska Cookas (Where Do You Come From)

Shalako (Caucasian Folk Dance)

Hye Dughak (Armenian Boys)

Mayr Araxi Aperov (On The Banks Of The Mother Arax River)

AC/DC

 When you say we’re going “bye bye” they go nuts.  Interesting going 70 mph down the highway with both of them sitting in your lap.

 Looking down the driveway from the front yard of the pad we’ll be getting in January.  Pretty solid driveway and road so it doesn’t look like it’s going to get too hairy during heavy snow and rain.  Things I never thought about living in the city.

 The house and the garage.  The house is fairly new but my family has some history on this property.  My great grandfather was born here and his dad homesteaded it back in the mid 1800’s.

 Where we’re going to keep the horses about a hundred feet from the front door.  It looks pretty dry out there because it’s gotten cold with winter upon us but it will green up real nice in the spring.

 Kim’s new ACDC tat.  The picture from my less than perfect camera doesn’t do it justice becuase it did turn out really nice.  She’s been after me to do another ACDC post so here we go.  It’s been almost a year (tomorrow) that I’ve been doing this blog so it’s about time to repeat myself (like I haven’t done that already).  I did a very minimalistic ACDC post for my 50th post so I thought I would do something a little more substancial this time.  I’ve gotten a lot more of their stuff since that time and they just came out with a new album.  The new one is pretty good and actually a lot better than their last few releases, but most people are die hard Bon Scott fans and probably won’t give this much of a chance.  Oh well, there’s a ton of music out there and nobody is going to like everything.  My personal favorite is Back In Black anyway.  I remember when I was a kid, I was told ACDC stood for Anti Christ Devils Children.  Did anyone else get told that?  KISS was Knights In Satan’s Service, right?  Well I’ve got several selections for you guys to cruise through so let’s get to the music.

 These are Kim’s favorites,

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Stiff Upper Lip

Thunderstruck

from the new album Black Ice,

War Machine

Money Made

from the Peel Session 06-21-76, but I can’t remember where I got them,

High Voltage

Live Wire

 

pretty sure I got these, In Memorium, from Erich over at http://www.goodbadmusic.com/ ,

Let There Be Rock

T.N.T.

live stuff from 10-16-79, forgot who the uploader was,

Highway To Hell

Sin City

pretty rude of me not to know where I got these from.  I guess it shows that on top of uploading stuff from my personal collection fro you listening pleasure, I do download as well.  Fully involved in the music if you know what I mean.  This stuff is from 11-02-79, just turned 29 years old,

Walk All Over You

Shot Down In Flames

We have this Donnington show on DVD and it really is amazing.  Impressive when a band acheives stadium status although I much prefer the closeness of small clubs.

 

EDIT:  These guys fucking suck!

Class War – Better Dead Than Wed

Just a short post for you all as work is a little hectic and I’ve been busy along with a little sick.  On a personal note I will say that we may be moving at the beginning of the year to a house that is further into the country and thus more animal friendly.  The dogs can run free, there’s a pasture where we can keep the horses, a little more space, Liam will have his own bedroom, and just all around better.  We’ll see.

I got this one when it first came out in about 1986.  What I was looking for was something along the lines of the band Conflict on the Motarhate label, but musically that’s not what I got.  I was still not disappointed though because this is still one of the angriest records I own.  I’m not going to pretend to know much about the movement this record backs up, you can read more about that here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_War , but I do know about hate and anger, especially for people who flaunt their wealth.  Royalty is such a joke but in the US we just have professional athletes, actors and rock stars to be in awe of.  Like being over paid makes them more important and interesting to the masses.  This record with it’s quirky rappy style has plenty of that for your consumption.   What else can I say, but give it a listen.

The Locust / Melt Banana split 7″

Hoss plays rough and really puts on his game face for the festivities.  Our other little dog, who is actually quite a bit bigger than Hoss, usually picks on him and dominates, but yesterday he beat the shit out of her.  I was going to stop them but my wife told me that he needed to put her in her place.  🙂  I’ve said it before, be glad he isn’t a full sized dog.

Can I put this one in the Jazz Punk category?  Kind of a tough call on this one as both bands have a grind or powerviolence thing going on, but I don’t have a categories for that yet.  Maybe a category called Insane would be a good place to put this.  If you know these bands you know what I’m talking about.  Probably not what most people would choose to listen to, but well worth at least checking out.  I’m not as familiar with The Locust as I am Melt Banana.  My bro Sang got me into Melt Banana years ago with a tape he sent me and I was blown away with the first song.  I ended up buying a lot of their stuff and getting a lot more by way of MP3.  They have a ton of releases as do The Locust.  A full blown Melt Banana post will be in order for the future.  My Humboldt bros had nothing but good to say about them as they have played Nor Cal several times and really put on a sweet live show.  Also my bro Jason toured with them but I haven’t been able to squeeze any stories out of him.  Check Wikipedia for a little about the band plus links to their website, myspace and label.  You can find the same type of thing for The Locust here .

The earliest live video I could find of MB…

Some Locust too…