Random Thought: A Victoria Sampler Vol. 1 & 2

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

FECES BLOWING EVERYWHERE!!!

Recorded live at The Bowery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on November 11th, 1984 by a would-be bootlegger who was recording the show. The Maxell XL II-S audio cassette was confiscated by Bill MacLeslie, who was The Replacements soundman for that tour. He confiscated it just as the band start to play "Let It Be".

The audio dropout heard during "Hear You Been to College" is caused by Paul Westerberg who accidentally pressed the record button on a Walkman while listening back to the master copy. If you listen closely he can be heard saying "Stop, 's' enough".

On January 25, 1985, Twin/Tone produced and released a cassette-only version of the show. The title The Shit Hits The Fans is a spoof of the Circle Jerks song, "When the Shit Hits the Fan". According to the label, only 10,000 copies were produced. 9,276 of them sold immediately; the rest, were given away as promo copies.

Only five of the cassette's 24 songs were written by the band. The rest were covers.

On March 22nd, 2007, The Bowery, was bulldozed to the ground.

R.I.P.

Once again, click on the album cover image to download a copy of The Shit.

1. "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (LLoyd Price)
2. "Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus" (Robyn Hitchcock)
3. "Lovelines" (Westerberg/Stinson/Stinson/Mars)
4. "I'll Be There" (Berry Gordy, Jr./Bob West/Hal Davis/Willie Hutch)
5. "Sixteen Blue" (Westerberg)
6. "Can't Hardly Wait" (Westerberg)
7. "I Will Dare" (Westerberg)
8. "Hear You Been to College" (Westerberg/Stinson/Stinson/Mars)
9. "Saturday Night Special" (Ed King/Ronnie Van Zant)
10. "Iron Man" (Butler/Iommi/Osbourne/Ward)
11. "Misty Mountain Hop" (Page/Plant/Jones)
12. "Heartbreaker" (Bonham/Jones/Page/Plant)
13. "Can't Get Enough" (Mick Ralphs)
14. "Jailbreak" (Phil Lynott)
15. "Breakdown" (Tom Petty)
16. "No More the Moon Shines on Lorena" (Alvin Pleasant Carter)
17. "Merry Go Round" (Nikki Sixx)
18. "Left in the Dark" (Ken Draznik)
19. "Takin' Care of Business" (Randy Bachman)
20. "I Will Follow" (Hewson/Evans/Clayton/Mullen)
21. "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (Jagger/Richards)
22. "Radio Free Europe" (Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe)
23. "The New World" (Cervenka/Nommensen Duchac)
24. "Let It Be" (Lennon/McCartney).

We Are Family

So much has been written about Charles Manson, I'm not going to bother.

But on September 11, 1967, recording began for Charlie's debut album (with overdubs done on August 9, 1968). Actually titled Charles Manson Sings, it was distributed during the Manson murder trial.

Songs on this disc have been covered, sampled and reworked (or possibly even plagiarized, as Devo allegedly did for Mechanical Man) by a multitude of artists, including Guns 'N' Roses, GG Allin, Red Kross, The Lemonheads, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

I'm a bit lazy tonight and don't feel like writing more. But suffice it to say that LIE was reissued in the mid 80s by Awareness Records, proceeds went to the families of victims of violence. Awareness Records is now out of business. The album was reissued again in 2006. Proceeds of that one are reported to go to Manson Family victim Wojciech Frykowski's family.

The cover is a copy of the December 19, 1969 Time Life front cover, only with "LIFE" substituted with "LIE".

Click On The Album Cover To Download The Album.

1. "Look at Your Game, Girl" – 2:03
2. "Ego" – 2:27
3. "Mechanical Man" – 3:18
4. "People Say I'm No Good" – 3:20
5. "Home Is Where You're Happy" – 1:29
6. "Arkansas" – 3:03
7. "I'll Never Say Never to Always" – 0:41
8. "Garbage Dump" – 2:34
9. "Don't Do Anything Illegal" – 2:52
10. "Sick City" – 1:36
11. "Cease to Exist" – 2:12
12. "Big Iron Door" – 1:10
13. "I Once Knew a Man" – 2:33
14. "Eyes of a Dreamer" – 2:35

Beyond Punk!

Every so often, British Music Magazine (that is, the Magazine is British, not the Music) Mojo includes a neat, thematic compilation CD. A few years ago, they had a collection of Post-Punk songs from different eras (late 70s to early 000s) in one of their issues. You get many of the usual suspects: The Fall, Pere Ubu, The Human League. But there are some nice, unexpected inclusions as well: Death From Above 1979 covering La Peste is nice.

Anyway, in case you didn't pick up the magazine, here's something to take you little bit...

Beyond Punk!


1.) Pere Ubu - Non-Alignment Pact
2.) A Certain Ratio - Choir
3.) Cabaret Voltaire - Silent Command
4.) The Futureheads - Park Inn
5.) Essential Logic - Aerosol Burns
6.) Mission Of Burma - Academy Fight Song
7.) Death From Above 1979 - Better Off Dead
8.) Kleenex - You
9.) Wire - Kidney Bongos
10.) The Human League - Almost Medieval
11.) Siouxsie & The Banshees - Mirage
12.) Bird Blobs - Billy
13.) The Fall - The Classical
14.) Scritti Politti - Skank Bloc Bologna
15.) Radio 4 - State Of Alert (Edit)

Nobody Loves The Hulk!

Seeing that there is a second Hulk movie released within -- what?...five years? -- I'm posting this 1969 ditty by little known Garage Rock band, The Traits.

According to the band, despite the copyright on the record sleeve, the song was NOT affiliated with Marvel Comics.



I'm also including a cover version by Swedish Garage Rock Revival band, The Maggots. I personally prefer the original. But you decide.

Click on the record sleeve images to download the songs.

Cheers.

The Ugly

Unlike their peers in New York and London, punk bands from Toronto never signed with major record companies (with the exception of The Diodes) . Many of these bands had to record their own songs, either through booking a recording studio or through cheap ass direct microphone-to-tape. The Ugly were one such band.

Sam Ferrare (aka Sam Ugly) and Tony Vincent (aka Tony Torcher or possibly Torture) got together as teens in a group called The Markeys, playing the British sounds of The Yardbirds, Kinks, Animals, Who and the Stones. After hearing the first LP by The Ramones, their new direction becomes clear. They enlist longtime accomplice Michael Mulroney (aka Mike Nightmare). Markeys guitarist Brian Vadders refuses to cut his hippy hair, so they kick him out and bring in Mike’s brother Raymi (aka Ray Gunner).

Unfortunately, when Vadders is replaced, he conveniently forgets to tell the rest of the group that his PA system was leased. They try to borrow it for a while, until Vadders decides to stop payment. The cops come by, take away the equipment and the group lands in jail. It would be their first of many scrapes with the law, leading the gang to describe their music, not as Punk Rock, but as “Hoodlum Rock” (WKRP In Cincinatti alert: You may remember an episode where a British band came to Cinci and the radio station was promoting them. The band said they were not “punk rock”, they were “hoodlum rock”. I wonder who had the nomenclature first). Nonetheless, Mike found Vadders a week a later and punched his lights out.

But it wasn’t just that they were loudest, crassest and most obnoxious band on the Toronto underground scene. They really were rough characters who played tough punk rock (although they were capable of playing sweet, forlorn rock ‘n’ roll. Witness “Stranded In The Laneway (Of Love)” below — although I’m not sure it’s with the original lineup). And because they were always in trouble with the law (Sam says one of the biggest problems with the development of The Ugly was that one of them was always in jail), they were forced to play out-of-the-way joints so the cops had trouble finding them. And Mike Nightmare would wear a disguise. Sometimes, those disguises would consist of a full-face black leather mask, other times, his trademark oversized yellow sunglasses, so authorities wouldn’t be able to identify him.

"Yes, the band really ARE ugly." -Creem, 1978

Anyway, to cut a short story short (read more in the excellent liner notes to The Ugly’s equally excellent retrospective, Disorder ), their last show with the original lineup takes place at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern, where they open for The Cramps. The last song they ever play is “Lust For Life”. When they finish, Raymi pushes over his Marshal Amp and smashes his guitar. He shakes hands with the band and splits.

The Ugly is over.

Mike Nightmare passed away sometime in 1997 or ‘98 (I don’t remember which), during one of his many stints in jail.

The Ugly reformed for their first show in almost thirty years at Toronto's Bovine Sex Club on Saturday July 12th., with all the original band members, save for Greg Dick who's fronting the band.

Download The Ugly Here.

Zero Discipline, Get It?

Well, it seems after almost 18 months or so, I was kicked out of Wordpress for what I believe are spurious, truly anal-retentive reasons. Seems they had a problem with some of my .mp3 posts.

So I'm moving the Model Citizen to Blogger. For those of you who populated my previous blog for unending downloads of Slow, et al...unfortunately you won't get as much information regarding many of the bands I featured there because Wordpress DELETED EVERYTHING.

So I can't even reclaim the lengthy histories I provided with each featured artist.

Oh well. I'll do the best that I can to re-up some stuff here. Just bear with me (or bare with me, if you're female): we'll get this thing up and running in no time.

Thanks. And Cheers!