Mommy's Little Monster

There were over 30 records on Jeff's initial list of records from Tim's collection that I was interested in. Thankfully, Jeff has been understanding, knowing that I can't afford to buy everything off that list at once, and he has been letting me pick away at it and pick up a few records every couple of weeks. Still, 30 records was a lot of records to hold, and shortly after making that initial list, I started making cuts. There were some that I would like to have, but realistically, I didn't care enough about (Murphy's Law on green vinyl and Step On It on black), or just seemed too expensive for me at the time (Bad Religion's Back To The Known and The Smiths Hatful of Hollow with a printing error on the sleeve)... so I cut them from my list.

One of the records that I considered cutting from my list was Social Distortion's Mommy's Little Monster.

Of all the records still left on my holdlist with Jeff, Mommy's Little Monster was the most expensive. Social Distortion was another band that I never heard back in my early days of punk. I'd heard some of their more rockabilly stuff over the years, and was never interested in listening to more from them... but about eight years ago, I finally checked them out properly and listened to their first couple of 7 inches and then the band's first album, Mommy's Little Monster. Now that was the real shit... this was punk... and I obsessed over those songs for a while, but given the pricetag they carry, I never picked one up. So, seeing a copy availble from Tim's collection was tempting, but did I really want to pay that much money for one?

While I was tempted to save the money, in the end that just seemed like a boring and safe option. I haven't had many instances this year of recklessness and stupidity, and it felt really good to do just that and buy this album.

First press from 1983 with the gatefold sleeve.

According to Discogs (and if we can't trust online information, what can we trust?) "most first pressings came in black, however an unknown amount were pressed in translucent purple." When Jeff told me that this pressing was purple when you hold it up to the light, it made me want it even more, and at that point, I knew that I was going to buy this no matter the price.

She Loves Me Not

While I'm a huge fan of No Escape, Deadguy and Bitter Branches, the one Tim Singer band that I've never paid much attention to has been Kiss It Goodbye. Back when the that album was released in 1997, I was all about the youth crew revival stuff and the Kiss It Goodbye record was too chaotic sounding to leave much of an impression on me. It was okay, but not something that I was interested in listening to very often. Looking at my listening history, I can see that I've listened to She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not exactly twice in the last 15 years. So yeah, while I'm familiar with the songs, I've never spent a lot of time with this album.

So while I still own my original CD from 1997, I'd never bothered with the vinyl for the Kiss It Goodbye album. When I saw that Rev was reissuing the record, and more importantly doing a special cover that was limited to only 50, I figured that it was time to finally buy the vinyl and really spend some time with the record.

This is a good record. I like all the other Tim Singer bands more, but I'm glad that I picked this up. I really like the look of this limited cover, and the stamped and numbered record label is a nice touch. Number 41 of 50.

Science, Not Fiction

It has been a while since we've seen a new record from Orange Goblin, with the excellent The Wolf Bites Back released back in 2018. Even with the covid pandemic, six years seems like a lost of lost time, so when Science, Not Fiction was released this year, I found myself asking if I really needed it.

I can't really blame my lack of interest in a new Orange Goblin record on the years since their last album. This blog is a documentation of my listening habits, and it is easy to see that I've been disconnected from new releases, and generally just wanting new shit in my ears. This kind of attitude has blinded me a bit and I didn't really give Science, Not Fiction a fair shake when I first heard it over the summer. I thought it was okay, but really I just wanted to listen to The Cure and Karate, so therefore I wasn't too fussed about buying the record. Closing in on the end of the year, and having my love of new music sparked by bands like The Obsessed, Fu Manchu and Grand Magus, I decided to revisit it and with this right mindset, suddenly, I'm loving it.

Orange Goblin play that rough kind of stoner metal, and from album to album you know what to expect from them. Nothing really different here, but this is just giving me what I want right now.

Clear colored vinyl, and the record has a bonus track that surprisingly isn't available through streaming. If you want to hear, you've got to get the physical format.

70's Birthday

Nothing too exciting here. I enjoy some Uriah Heep if I'm diving deep into the 70's, but even then I tend to stick with their earlier albums like Look At Yourself and Demons And Wizards. Jeff has been pushing the band's 5th album, and the second one they released in 1972, and trying to get me to check out The Magician's Birthday... and when he saw a copy of it in Tim's collection, he pulled it out and insisted that I take it.

The Magician's Birthday is a good 70's rock record, and as a big Heep fan himself, I can understand why Jeff would push this record. It falls in line nicely with the Demons And Wizards record that the band released earlier that year.

Solid addition to my 70's vinyl collection, and it was free, which is always a nice bonus.

Young, Fast Straw Dogs

Straw Dogs were a band born from the tradition of early 80's Boston hardcore bands that really just wanted to rock. Following in the footsteps of Gang Green, SSD and DYS, I'm assuming that The FU's had their eye on bigger things, so they changed their name to Straw Dogs and injected more metal into their sound... I mean come on, look at that cover art for the EP and tell me that this band didn't want to tap into the metal market.

Somehow, up until last week, I'd never heard Straw Dogs. Seeing the band's first EP from 1986 in Tim's old collection, was enough for me to finally check them out. As soon as the first song, Trigger Finger, kicked in, I was sending a message off to Jeff, telling him to set it aside for me. While I've enjoyed what I've heard from The FU's, dare I say that I like these songs from Straw Dogs a lot more? I don't know, this kind of crossover style really works for me and I'm having a lot of fun listening to this record... even the cover of Queen's Tie Your Mother Down (a lot of metal bands were doing weird covers like this at the time) and the rerecording of Young, Fast Iranians... it all makes for a great 19 minute EP.

Jeff literally received hundreds of records from Tim's collection, and he has been cleaning each one prior to selling them, so I've been getting updates on what is available in waves. As I was getting ready to post this Straw Dogs EP, Jeff sent me a list of other records that were going to be coming up for sale and I noticed that the band's We Are Not Amused LP was in the collection. After spending so much time with this EP this past week, I'm obviously going to need to get that album at some point as well.

Tim Sounds Of Liberty

Another band that I never bothered checking out as I was discovering punk and hardcore bands throughout the last half of the 80's was T.S.O.L. As I was sitting here typing up this post, and listening to this self titled EP from 1981, I was curious as to why this band escaped me at that time. I did a quick check of their discography and saw the cover for their 1987 album, Hit And Run, and oh fuck yes... that would have been exactly why I stayed away from this band back then. I saw that cover and never bothered to check out their early stuff because why the fuck would I when your hair is teased and two feet high off your head in 1987. Hard pass.

Shhhh... don't tell anyone, but I am kind of enjoying Hit And Run while I'm listening to it for the first time today.

To this day, I'm still not super familiar with T.S.O.L., but this 12 inch should be mandatory listening for anyone into hardcore. This is so good and I feel bad that 18 year old Mike missed out on this back in the day. Aggression and attitude filled punk... five songs in seven and a half minutes, that is just so perfect that I find myself listening to it a couple of times each day..

This is the 4th pressing with the silver Posh Boy labels. Another one that was in excellent shape from Tim's old collection, and still had the plastic wrap on the cover (which I promptly removed).

The Day The Country Died

While Youth Of Today and Agnostic Front were surprises in Tim's collection, finding a record from Subhumans was not. Being a bit older and into punk years before I even knew this style of music existed, this was the kind of stuff that I expected to find amongst his records.

Subhumans were an early 80's UK punk band, and somehow I managed to miss them as I was discovering stuff like GBH and The Exploited later that decade. I do remember buying a CD from The Subhumans at one point in the late 80's, but it was the band from Canada and not the UK one. I wasn't terribly interested in that CD, and it turned me off from checking out the proper UK Subhumans until sometime around 2000 when I was downloading a bunch of albums from Napster etc Even then, I was consuming so much new music because it was free, that I really didn't give The Day The Country Died a proper listen.

I've given this album more of a chance in recent years, but I don't think that I really gave it the appreciation that it deserves until I saw that the record was available from Tim's collection. I'm having a lot of fun listening to this right now. I imagine 18 year old Mike discovering it alongside Troops of Tomorrow and City Baby Attacked By Rats and loving it.

This is the 1990 reissue. I kind of wish it was at least one of the 1983 pressings, but that's okay. I'll still take this.