4zzz Brisbane Podcasts: I recently downloaded Can’t Stop It II -Australian Post-Punk 1979-84 from eMusic, having been a fan of the first edition that came out a few years back. I think the new one is as good as the first, which is rare for these kinds of comps and one track in particular entitled Sidetracking by the Brisbane area band The Swell Guys really blew me away. It’s totally up my alley with its Stickmen-style riffage and uber-nerdy vocals about having no friends. The fact that everyone I have shown it to since does not see it’s appeal emboldens me to post it on here so that I can hear what you, the readers of Last Days have to say about this fine piece of musicianship. So I went scouring the interwebs looking for anything else by this rare band and found out that they had released a 7inch back in 1981 entitled Songs.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find it on the blogosphere. Does anyone have it? As a consoloation prize, I did find an amazing little blog from Down Under entitled That Striped Sunlight Sound which back in 2008, featured a series of podcasts on the history of Brisbane underground music that is absolutely amazing. If you have time to spare, check these out. The hosts are very informative, the music is cool….everyone’s a winner.

Razorcake East LA Podcasts: Moving to the Northern Hemisphere but staying in equally warm climates, is Jimmy Alvorado’s second installment of East LA punk and hardcore on Razorcake. A while back, Jimmy had put together the first installment and it had included the track Moving Your Mouth by The Odd Squad that I had ripped from my copy of Los Angelinos. Although there were some really good tracks on this first one, I have to say the new one, which chronicles East LA punk rock from the mid-1980s to the present is even better. Most of the stuff on this podcast is hardcore but there are a few exceptions, including Carnival by The Blues Experiment, that are just incredible. The punk rock on here is pretty bad-ass as well, Loli and The Chones being my personal favorite.

JP & OTTO SLAM TRAIN WRCT 88.3 FM: Starting off the set with NOTA is never a bad idea and it never lets up for a good hour with this 80 minute excerpt of a 1985 hardcore punk radio show from Pittsburgh’s WRCT. This is classic shit and really captures how things were. The hosts in particular, who include frequent Last Days commenter and fellow Julie Newmar enthusiast Otto, are politically incorrect and juvenile all the way through whether they are skewering Back To The Future or the artwork of Buky Schwartz. Musically, it spans the gamut from The UK Subhumans to DRI to The Adolescents and along with my comp tape from 1986, it captures the times pretty well. In fact, this is actually even better than my comp tape because it includes Sitar Power.

DFA Colette Mix: So what would be the best way to follow an hour and twenty minutes of vintage hardcore? If you guessed a music mix made for a French fashion boutique by DFA Records, you would be correct. Prompted by my recent Futurisk post, Jonathan Galkin of DFA Records contacted me to fill me in on some back story regarding the mysterious Florida band. It turns out that the president of Astralwerks was (circa 2003) the brother of Jeremy Kosoline, the main guy behind Futurisk. Could this be the mysterious Larry Bud Humphries who commented on my post? Apparently, Jonathan found this out when DFA included the Futurisk song Push Me Pull You on a mix CD for the Paris store Colette circa 2003. They signed a distribution contract with Astralwerks and next thing ya know they got the scoop from Larry Bud himself.

Now if you think that a mix CD for a boutique sounds like a terrible idea, I can totally appreciate that. What immediately comes to mind for me is being at the mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was 17 and having some girl at The Gap recommend the SX Express or some shit to me. My memory of this is accompanied by the dit-dit-dit beat of the bad House Music pumping thru the store speakers and thinking, I gotta get the fuck outta this place. I’m sorry if this imagery is too graphic for you. I have been scarred for life by these trips to clothing retail establishments in the Midwest. I literally am breaking into cold sweats at the mere thought.

But if you think this mix has anything in common with the above scenario, you sir and madam, are wrong. There is some really amazing shit on this mix from Cabaret Voltaire to The Rapture. The tracklisting is available here. DFA Records is one of the best labels of the past ten years and its pretty cool to know that they were involved in the re-discovery of Futurisk. I was happy to hear from Jonathan because DFA has been mixing punk and dance music for quite some time and I consider myself a fan. Their website is undergoing construction I believe but their Myspace is here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 8:51 am and is filed under podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.