Subterania Ladbroke Grove London, UK October 11, 1989
audience recording (sound quality: VG+; a solid recording with clear vocals and good instrum. separation)
01 intro
02 Wet Blanket
03 Singing In My Sleep
04 The Oncoming Day
05 Night of Chill Blue
06 Dan Destiny and the Silver Dawn
07 Familiarity Breeds Contempt
08 Past Part Past Fiction
09 Effloresce and Deliquesce
10 Rain
11 House With a Hundred Rooms
12 I Love My Leather Jacket
13 Pink Frost
14 Dead Web
15 Whole Lot of Non Going On
16 Look for the Good In Others
17 encore break
18 Kaleidoscope World
19 I Saw Your Silhouette
20 encore break
21 Brave Words
22 Great Escape
ROB SEZ: Got longevity? The Chills do. Thanks to the stubborn persistence of founder, lead vocalist, & songwriter Martin Philipps, The Chills are still at it more than 30 years after they began. Here's a pair of shows 31 years apart, with deep thanks to buenaventura, auto_pilot, and crankingamps for sharing their gems. The Chills' latest studio album is Scatterbrain, released in May of this year.
The Powerstation Auckland, New Zealand May 14, 2021
audience recording (sound quality: VG+; there's noticeable crowd chatter, but it's not intrusive during the songs)
Neil & Tim Finn 'Mood Swinging Men' fanclub-only live comp, 1995-1996 various dates & venues: UK, USA, N.Z. & Australia
soundboard recordings (quality: Ex-)
ROB SEZ: Way back when, I purchased this directly from the Finn Brothers / Crowded House fanclub, and I just sold it to help pay some bills. It's never seen a general/commercial release, and is impossible to find at a reasonable price. I ripped it before I sold it, so of course I'm sharing it here. Please enjoy this tuneful treat. (You can find another Finn Brothers share I posted at the blog a few years ago HERE.)
03 Something In the Water 04 Meluzina Man 05 Sing Song 06 The Young and Restless 07 The Golden Grove 08 Man On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 09 Sunken Treasure 10 The Venus Trail 11 Hey Seuss 12 Cash None 13 Outer Space 14 Ritual Tragick 15 encore break 16 Hairs
TT: 54:27 mins.
The 3D's: David Saunders - guitar, vocals Dave Mitchell - guitar, vocals Denise Roughan - bass, vocals Domenic Stones - drums
ROB SEZ: Honestly, I'm not that familiar with The 3Ds, so I don't have a lot to say about this blazing live set. Thankfully, the taper and uploader, mrpember, had some comments. I quote him verbatim, with my deep thanks for his generosity:
Great set from this great New Zealand noise-pop band. Their album The Venus Trail had just been released in the U.S. on Merge Records so this was a bit of a 'showcase' for the label and it went extremely well, they got a legitimate encore which was rare for an opening band. The board mix took a few songs to dial in but for most of this set it is excellent.
As I normally did after recording bands who were on their label, I dropped a cassette of this show off at the Merge Records office in Chapel Hill the day after the show. I got a call later that day or the next day asking if I could drop off three more copies, the band thought it was one of the best shows they'd ever played and really liked the tape and each member wanted a copy.
They were the second band that night, following the Raymond Brake and followed by The Archers of Loaf (who seemed a bit intimidated to follow them).
If the holidays are a time for getting together with loved ones, then I can’t think of a better way to start night two of our little shindig than with the Clean. I have a vivid memory of riding toward the Lincoln Tunnel — this is something like 20 years ago — listening for the first time to a pre-recorded cassette of Compilation that a friend thought I’d like, and flipping my lid. Speaking of lids, the Clean’s were topped with black wigs, and had lots to say between songs, much of it profane. They opened strong with “Hold On to the Rail,” “Side On” and a world premiere “Factory Man,” and ended even stronger, with a triple play of classics — “Point That Thing Somewhere Else,” “Tally Ho,” and their Jewish number “Beatnik” — before closing with a gorgeous “Safe in the Rain.”
ROB SEZ: Gotta be up front about my profound love of The Clean, comprised of David & Hamish Kilgour and Robert Scott. If you force me to say which N.Z. band I love the most, I will readily cop to The Clean. Something about David K's way with words, melodies, and the just-right guitar lines: feels like a complete package. HUGE THANKS to YLTfan for recording this one and to neil d for doing the rest. My apologies for being so slow to get this series going: just too much going on re: the rest of my life in the past 6 weeks. I'm now setting aside some early a.m. hours every week now, so look for weekly posts from here on.
The Great Unwashed Demo recordings Colombo Street Christchurch, N.Z. 1983-xx-xx
soundboard recordings (audio quality: OK)
01 Zombies at the Door 02 Instrumental 03 Instrumental 04 The Way You Should Be Now 05 Instrumental 06 (2nd take of 2nd piece)
ROB SEZ: This post kicks off a new series focusing on New Zealand ROIOs from the 1980s and 1990s. I thought the Great Unwashed would be a great way to start, since it includes members of The Clean, The Bats, and The Chills. HUGE THANKS to H.T. and Happytrader for sharing their treasures with folks like me. Watch for lots more in the coming weeks...
The Gluepot Auckland, N.Z. Aug. 9, 1984
audience recording (sound quality: very good)
Hamish Kilgour (left) & Pete Gutteridge (RIP), 1984
01 Toadstool Blues
02 Neck of the Woods 03 Small Girl 04 Green Skin 05 ? 06 ? 07 ? 08 ? 09 Born In the Wrong Time 10 Middle Sized Mind 11 Feel Too Much 12 Boat With No Ocean 13 It's a Day 14 Duane Eddy 15 Can't Find Water 16 Sense of Balance
Coming Your Way: ROIOs by New Zealand Indie Groups I Love
ROB SEZ: After a much-needed break, I will be re-booting the blog very soon with weekly posts by New Zealand artists & bands I love. Who'm I talking about? The Clean, David Kilgour, The Chills, The Verlaines, The Bats, The Great Unwashed, The 3Ds, Crowded House, The Finn Brothers, The Gordons, The Mutton Birds, Don McGlashan, 7 Worlds Collide and the great Dave Dobbyn. That's not a complete list of Kiwi music I listen to, but it pretty well covers the ones for which I have ROIOs to share.
"Why N.Z. music?" you might wonder. I fell in love with the country when I went there with my wife for a 2-week visit back in the 1980s. I love the whole vibe and feel of the place, but I don't think it receives nearly enough attention or recognition. (Let's not forget which country was the most effective in quickly kicking COVID's ass as a public health hazard...) In keeping with the "Every Cult Band Needs a Cult" ethos of the blog, it seemed right to shine a spotlight on a place with a LOT to like — especially its many wonderful indie bands.
The first post of the re-boot is coming your way in a few days, so check back here soon.
Santa Monica, CA April 1, 2010 webstream recording (sound quality: Ex-; best-sounding webstream capture I've ever heard)
01 Them That Do Nothing 02 Effortlessly
03 If Only the Moon
Were Up
04 Something Familiar
05 Let's Write a Book
06 Rockist
(School of Language cover)
07 Each Time Is a New Time
08 Share the Words
09 Tell Me Keep Me
10 Interview with DJ Jason Bentley
ROB SEZ:Field Music — how do they do it? How do the Brewis brothers throw so many genres into their magical musical blender and come out with such tasty prog-pop-funk+? And how the heck do they re-create it so effectively in a live setting? I'm hard-pressed to say which of these sets I like the best. They were recorded almost exactly 6 years apart, and have no songs in common. The sound quality is extraordinary for a webstream capture. Field Music just released their latest studio concoction, Flat White Moon (video of lead track "Orion from the Street" is below). I've heard it, and it's fab.
• Yesterday's Tomorrow — Live 2018 N.C.-centric Release
• Chris Stamey & Peter Holsapple's Our Back Pages — on vinyl & CD
• Chris' Brand New Shade of Blue — on vinyl for RSD
Warm Up Your Wallet, Your Plastic &/or Your Crypto-Currency
Peter, Chris, Mitch, Will, Don & company Winston-Salem musical nostalgia at its best (details below)
Digital-only delight to be released on vinyl & CD in June
Act fast:just 250 copies of this one will be released on vinyl in July
ROB SEZ:In a mystical sign the pandemic might not actually last forever, the musical gods have smiled on fans of The dB's and their cohorts. Thanks to Omnivore Recordings (what an amazing label they are), we shall soon be spoiled by an embarassment of musical riches. While two of these titles are "new" thanks to vinyl- and CD-format releases of material that saw prior digital-only release, one of them is entirely new: Yesterday's Tomorrow: Live at the Ramkat 2018. This was a one-night-only live extravaganza that saw reunions of several bands Chris Stamey, Peter Holsapple, Mitch Easter, Will Rigby, Don Dixon (etc.) were in once upon a time, many moons ago. Sneakers, Little Diesel, Sacred Irony, Rittenhouse Square and many others came together for the event, and Mr. Stamey and Mitch made sure the evening was beautifully recorded for posterity. This one's out May 7th on CD and download, with Our Back Pages (on CD and vinyl) to follow in June and Brand New Shade of Blue (on vinyl) in July, coinciding with the summer Record Store Day release dates.
sample Let's Active's "Room With a View" from the extravaganza
• Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey: Our Back Pages - pre-order CD release on Omnivore HERE; read about RSD vinyl release HERE(note: CD and digital re-release will have 2 tracks not found in the original download: "Darby Hall" and "In Spain")
• Chris Stamey & Fellow Travelers: Brand New Shade of Blue - read about RSD vinyl release HERE & Omnivore digital release HERE
Live performance by reunited, iconic members of Winston-Salem scene
Package contains detailed liner notes by Stamey and a 24-page color history booklet
with anecdotes, artifacts, and rare photographs.
In a fun, Nuggets-like trip back to the Summer of Love era, Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Celebrating the Winston-Salem Sound, due out April 30, 2021 on Omnivore Recordings, shines a strobe light on the vibrant ’60s and ’70s Combo Corner rock scene of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Original members of bands such as Arrogance, Little Diesel, Sacred Irony, and Rittenhouse Square —including Mitch Easter (Let’s Active); Peter Holsapple, Will Rigby, and Chris Stamey (the dB’s); singers Don Dixon, Dale Smith, Lynn Blakey, Bob Northcott; and many others — convened on May 12, 2018, at Winston-Salem’s Ramkat club to revisit those fuzzbox years, and this remarkable live recording shines brightly with their camaraderie and precise enthusiasm for those days of yore. In the mind-blowing songs of now-vanished local legends Captain Speed and the Fungi Electric Mothers, the classic set list of the Imperturbable Teutonic Griffin, and amid the amusing scene portrayals of collectors’ favorite Rittenhouse Square, the electric guitars soar, with plenty of feedback and sizzle. With the added oomph of the Occasional Orchestra (live strings, percussion, and brass), music direction by Doug Davis (Vagabond Saints’ Society), and stops along the way for affectionate renditions of then-faves by Bubble Puppy, the Easybeats, the Music Machine, the Electric Prunes, the Beatles, and even Kool and the Gang, there’s a lot to love here.
The impetus for this extraordinary concert was that Stamey had a book fresh off the press, a song-based memoir called A Spy in the House of Loud. A portion of the book references his time in New York, but the first part remembers, song by key song, the late 1960s and early ’70s creative rock music scene in Winston. This was sometimes called the Combo Corner scene, after the title of a short-lived column in Guitar Player magazine was repurposed to ironically christen a hangout spot at R.J. Reynolds High School. A surprising number of the Combo Corner crew went on to play and produce music professionally in the decades that followed — often with one another in different configurations (e.g., dB’s, Let’s Active, or with R.E.M., Steve Earle, Matthew Sweet, Vassar Clements, Hootie & the Blowfish, Big Star's Third Live, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Golden Palominos) and in different locales. They were still in regular contact the day Stamey suggested they try to “play the soundtrack to the book.”
The band that most credit with starting the ball rolling here, back in 1968, was the aforementioned Captain Speed. Sadly, their bandleader, singer/bassist Bud Carlisle (real name Richard Moore), had died in 2010, and the psychedelic pioneers never released any music whatsoever, although their live shows (complete with flying duck) were still the stuff of local legend. In order to perform their essential songs, Easter, Borthwick, Davis, and Corky McMillan (Sacred Irony’s bassist) created an ensemble just for the event, later dubbed the Love Valets—a tongue-in-cheek moniker taken from “N.C.’s Woodstock,” a 1970 music festival in Love Valley, N.C. And likewise, the catch-all for the new big-ensemble groupings was the Royal Opposition, only a consonant away from Easter and Borthwick’s seminal 1968 surf-rock combo, the Loyal Opposition.
Chris explains: “From the ’50s R&B stylings of the “5” Royales’ “Think” through the dense mystery of Captain Speed’s “Reptilian Disaster” all the way to the future-punk of Little Diesel’s “Kissy Boys” and Sneakers’ “Condition Red” and the sophistication of Let’s Active’s “Room with a View,” there’s a ley line running through a scene and a city, one that you’ll find is worth exploring. Maybe every city has a beloved scene in its rearview worthy of celebration? I hope this is indeed the case. But this one is our story. Or at least a time-tunnel’s glimpse into a part of it. As Captain Speed sang all those years ago, ‘Our high kites do star those nights, where you can see beyond today, tomorrow . . . forever.’ ”
The concert was captured to multitrack, lovingly mixed by Stamey and Easter, and is now available as Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Celebrating the Winston-Salem Sound. A multi-decade tour-de-force, and an important document in itself, Yesterday’s Tomorrow is more than just a celebration. It’s a history lesson, with the present happily dressed up in the past, looking toward the future.
Track Listing:
Hot Smoke & Sassafras—Rittenhouse Square
Reptilian Disaster—The Love Valets
Room With a View—The Royal Opposition feat. Lynn Blakey & Mitch Easter
Talk Talk—The Imperturbable Teutonic Griffin
Yesterday’s Tomorrow—The Love Valets
Hollywood Swinging—Little Diesel
I See Love—Sacred Irony
Black Death—The Love Valets
S'il Vous Pląt (Live) РSneakers
Got to Get You Into My Life—The Royal Opposition feat. Don Dixon
Condition Red (Live) – Sneakers
Every Word Means No—The Royal Opposition feat. Mitch Easter
Think feat. Don Dixon—The Royal Opposition
Like Wow—Rittenhouse Square
King Battle of the Bands—Rittenhouse Square
Kissy Boys—Little Diesel
The Train Stops Here—The Royal Opposition feat. Mitch Easter
I Am Your Doctor—Sacred Irony
Ruby—Sneakers
Maybe I’m Amazed—The Royal Opposition feat. Don Dixon
Good Times—Sacred Irony
Galaxies of Love—The Royal Opposition feat. Bob Northcott
I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)—The Imperturbable Teutonic Griffin
This Is the Kit Compilation of Live Tracks 2016-2021
soundboard recordings (quality: Ex- to VG+, all are webcast/webstream recordings)
SAMPLE VIDEO: "Moonshine Freeze" - Live at Glastonbury 2019
01 No Such Thing(live in France)
02 This Is What You Did(live in France)
03 Coming to Get You Nowhere (CBS Saturday Sessions)
04 Off Off On (live in France)
05 All Written Out In Numbers(live at The Smokehouse)
06 Bullet Proof (live at The Smokehouse)
07 Magic Spell (Paris Sessions)
08 Hotter Colder (live at Rough Trade)
09 Was Magician (live performance video)
10 Bad Feeling (live in France - Muzz cover)
11 Lemon World (live in France - The National cover)
12 Misunderstanding (live at Wee Studio)
13 Moonshine Freeze (live at Glastonbury)
14 Coming to Get You Nowhere (New Sounds, Kate solo)
ROB SEZ: This is the Kit — wow! Kate Stables & company are knocking me out with their latest release Off Off On. I'd heard about the band many years ago when they were labeled "alternative folk". Good stuff for what it was, but something stunning happened in the last year or two: This Is the Kit now has a uniquely compelling sound, a great blend of rock, folk, world, psychedelic, singer-songwriter, with a judicious deployment of horns, and ... I'm not sure what else. But it's REALLY GOOD in Kate and the band's capable hands. No wonder The National, Elbow, BBC6, Sharon Van Etten (etc.) have championed the group. My enthusiasm prompted me to seek out their back catalog and more recent live performances, which illustrate the onstage magic they conjure. Originally, I was gonna share the 2018 live set below as my "main post," along with some miscellaneous live tracks. My custom-made Live, Recently compilation turned out so well, I'm reversing the usual order. MEGA THANKS to Yousef for sharing the Manchester Folk Festival recording. Check out this band & give them a generous listen.
another fab photo by Chris Sikich
Manchester Folk Festival Home Manchester, UK Oct. 18, 2018
The dB's — invited by Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo ... and they sing "Hanukkah Time"!
01 intro
02 We Were Happy There
03 Soul Kiss
04 You Got It Wrong
05 The Fight
06 Ash
07 Home for the Holidays
08 Love Is for Lovers
09 Hanukkah Time
10 Big Brown Eyes
11 World to Cry
12 Excitement
13 Dynamite
14 Amplifier
15 (I Thought) You Wanted
to Know
16 Cycles Per Second
17 Neverland
ROB SEZ: I do love these surprise soundboard recordings that drop unexpectedly into my lap! HUGE THANKS to YLTfan for recording and to neil d for mixing and mastering this one, which sounds fantastic. Speaking of surprises, check out the super deep cut "Ash" from Ride the Wild Tom-Tom, which might not have been played live prior to this gig. This is the only known live soundboard recording of the band from 2007.
Here's Ira Kaplan's dB's rave from his 2007 Hanukkah diary: I’ve said it before, and I said it onstage last night, and I’m saying it again: Without the dB’s, it’s unlikely there would be Yo La Tengo. I’ll save the many reasons for the Director’s Cut of this diary, but suffice to say that sharing a stage with them on Thursday night was exciting and emotional beyond reason. Back to the classic quartet for the first time since their comeback shows, they opened with “We Were Happy There” from Repercussion. What followed was incredible. Some of the hits, of course — “Amplifier,” “Neverland,” “Love Is for Lovers,” “Dynamite,” “Big Brown Eyes” . . . who am I kidding, all their songs are hits in my book. And a selection of oddities — “Soul Kiss”! “You Got It Wrong”! “Christmas Time” revised to “Hanukkah Time”! “Excitement”! — that had me choked up from start to finish. They’ll be at Southpaw tonight, and so would I if I weren’t otherwise occupied.
REPERCUSSION:Explore the connections between The dB's and Yo La Tengo HERE.
Subterania
