Kisses and Hugs (Raw Sugar/N=K)

This may seem like an oddity to have in my record collection but drummer Chris Strunk was (and is) a good friend, and he released this in 2001 though it documents a band he was in years before. Recorded in 1994,  Kisses and Hugs are pretty forgotten now and maybe weren't so well known outside of the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, but this compiled recordings that were meant to come out in other formats and never did. I'm not sure how this fits into the continuum of hardcore of the time or how they might be remembered now, if at all; certainly there are the spazzy explosions into blast beats and screaming, a genre known later as 'power violence', but that doesn't feel quite like the whole story to me. Yet Kisses and Hugs pulled things back from the brink and appeared to be more interested in a balance of mood and energy than just pure aggression. Certainly the 12 songs on this EP fly by quickly (it's 45rpm), and they mastered that thing 90s hardcore did where it would find a 'groove' around a thick, vaguely metallic riff and use it to slow down bits in the middle, if only to add drama to the fast explosive parts. Joe Carducci probably could dissect exactly how the bass, guitar and drums come together to make 'rock' but it's clearly visceral, though thoughtful. And for every anomaly such as 'Under the Rug', a long track with slow, moody post-rock interludes, it's followed up by something aggressive and scorching. Yes, there's a ferocious Negative Approach cover ('Kiss Me Kill Me') but it also has a mandolin and kazoo breakdown in the middle. It's not quite schizophrenic but rather suggestive of a larger vision, of a young band working within hardcore's boundaries but already frustrated at its orthodoxy. The members all went on to a lot of interesting future bands (Conversions, Sleeper Cell, An Oxygen Auction, etc.) making it a shame that there's so little left to listen to from this early projects's existence. Without a lyrics sheet, we'll never know exactly what 'Civ Lied' is about - I assume it's about the Gorilla Biscuits frontman but maybe about the Sid Meier computer game - and 'Why Do You Insist I Need College To Validate My Life, Fucker?' is a truly great title, and the song is little more than that shouted once.

Howlin' Wolf (MCA/Chess)

Re-released posthumously after his death, this second Howlin' Wolf record is one of those classics that has the iconic cover and the iconic sound, and I'm not sure what I can write here that would really do the record justice. If this project is in many ways about my personal feelings on a record and my relationship to it (which is certainly more interesting than hearing someone write about how great Pet Sounds is for the 60000th time, I hope) then I have little to say here. Every time I have ever played this record, which is culled from a bunch of disparately recorded singles between 1957 and 1961, I've enjoyed it immensely. And that's all I can really say about it - I like Howlin' Wolf, really who doesn't? - but he's never been someone I made a personal connection to. His voice was always what I latched onto, but listening today I'm really appreciating the space in the recordings and how, for 'electric blues', they really take their time to get places. 'The Red Rooster' is barely there, shuffling along with guitar bursts only as Mr. Wolf seemed to feel like it; it's Hubert Sumlin who I think does the really sharp leads on most of this record, and some of them are pretty fucking cutting. 'Wang-Dang Doodle' is the obligatory dirty sex entendre that all late 50s blues records have (well, that and 'Back Door Man' and probably all of the other cuts too), and on this the repetition of the rhythm section is remarkable, as they seem to hang back from the 12 bar progression or at least give it a pleasantly monotonous feel. 'Spoonful' has a real trashcan sound, again quite spacious and the surface noise from this repress might as well be part of the mix, as I couldn't imagine this without it. Surely for as much as I'm a fan of Captain Beefheart I must recognise Wolf's influence on him vocally - there's parts on this record where his vibrato is so extreme that it sounds like he must be singing into a piece of waxed paper. I'm also really into the piano playing on this record, which is noodly, all upper register, and sometimes just a series of trills punctuating between the 12 bars. It's true that this is definitively 'urban' in comparison to the 'country blues'/pre-war sound that is so collectible, and I don't think it's just because the instruments are electrified - there's something about the feel, like you can imagine the hot city air when it was recorded, and maybe it's just the group nature as opposed to a solo artist. So yeah, I've just done the exact thing I said I wouldn't do - blandly described this record instead of trying to find a personal connection to it. My father's record collection is all either classical music or blues from this style/era, though I'm not sure if he's a Howlin' Wolf fan or not. I guess there's a feeling of some sort of connection to him when listening to this, though it's a grasp, to be honest. Actually, listening to this makes me think of Little Howlin' Wolf, whose music has little to do with this besides the name but is truly indescribable and (I think) inspiring - but we're still a looooong way from the Ls. And by the way, this is the 500th post!

Egg, Eggs - 'The Cleansing Power of Fruit' (Feeding Tube)

I'm enthusiastic for any band who features punctuation in their name. Egg, Eggs are as confusing as their name, built around free electric rock, random electronics, and babbling nonsense vocals. There's parts here that start to resemble song structures, certainly with repetition in the voice, but it beelines for absurdity as soon as it can. Recording techniques are scattered, with lots clearly sourced from practices and open jams, edited into a whole that is just as incoherent as fragments, but longer. I admit I ordered this because I was getting stuff from Feeding Tube anyway and it sounded intruiging; the first two listens did nothing for me, but this time through I'm really grooving on it. There's people from the Western Massachusetts scene all over this, though the only name I recognise is John Maloney from Sunburned Hand of the Man, whose drumming here is crisp, light and evasive. While the vocalist is chanting about feathers and seashells, you get some shit-fart bass, clattering snare, and a general discordance. If your only influence was reading old issues of Bananafish and then you decided to start a rock band, it would probably sound like this. I love most forms of absurd nonsense, and I also have a high tolerance for curious vocal techniques; singer David Russell is quite the tenor, squeaking around almost like a caricature while obsessively intoning mantras like 'My name's Mr. Eat Candy, I'm pleased to meet you mystery candy". I'll imagine that is actually Hollywood director David O. Russell, who swung by while filming The Fighter to record these sessions. If you like Starship Beer or large parts of the BUFMS box set, then this is carrying the torch. It's also endless, or feels that way; it's really long, for a single LP, and varied enough that the more driving parts ('Foul Chinese Waterfront Pig') offset the more spare elements, and it feels like a true compendium of madness. It's hard to pinpoint what Egg, Eggs are striving to express here - there's a strong sense of game-playing, of course, and a collage aesthetic throughout; but I can't help but wonder why they chose these edits over the surely hours of other sessions they had.

Kevin Ayers / John Cale / Eno / Nico - 'June 1, 1974' (Island)

I think this is actually one of the most overrated live albums ever, and I wouldn't own it except I found it for $2 somewhere and John Cale's 'Heartbreak Hotel' is pretty great. Actually the Eno songs are cool too, starting out with 'Driving Me Backwards' which is a wonderful and perverse choice to start an album with, though I would never reach for this when Here Come the Warm Jets is just a few shelves down. The four artists here don't really do a whole lot with each other and the record is dominated by Ayers whose renditions are somewhat lackluster. But as I mentioned, 'Heartbreak Hotel' is pretty killer-- and it was performed because the night before the show (May 31, 1974), Ayers banged Mrs. John Cale. Of course, the liner notes don't say anything about this, but it's sure in the performance. Some wasted dude named Rabbit plays organ on almost every track and I'd like to know what happened to him. Robert Wyatt also fails to liven things up. But maybe I'm just being a bit negative because I'm starting to get sick of Kevin Ayers by this point. Nico supposedly performed 'Janitor of Lunacy', but it was cut in favor of the Doors cover 'The End'. I used to think her studio version of this was super intense but now I'm not sure that I can ever bear to sit through it again. (Well, I'll have to when I get to the N's). Maybe this just isn't the night for me.