This may in fact be the  best hardcore/alt-rock/punk record that came out in the late 1980's. Rapeman were a supergroup of sorts founded by Steve Albini after the implosion of Big Black. Albini chose to  name his new venture after  a rather charming Japanese comic book in which the protaganist would you know what the villians. Frightful premise and bless his cotton socks, Albini, despite all the controversy the band name generated during their short life span, certainly defended his choice of name at the time. The controversy was played out every week in the NME during their short UK tour in 1989. In fact Blast First's pressing plant employees refused to handle the record in  protest of their name. The band were picketted throughout their tour and they eventually broke after releasing their one and only album. I sold my rather snappy vinyl copy of this many years ago and my mate Doc brought this back from the States with him in the late 1990's. The great thing about the CD version is the inclusion of the  amazing Budd E.P. which arguably is Rapeman's finest moment.

I remember first hearing Rapeman on my 17th birthday. In the redneck bullshit town I grew up in there was one sparsely stocked import record store. It mainly stocked all of the Australian underground stuff coming out on Citadel, Au Go Go and Red Eye but it also had it's fair share of Blast First and SST releases. To be honest I'd never heard any of the stuff but used to go in every Friday night and paw over these records I had little chance of hearing. My mates (probably sick of having to go into that shop with me) took me inthere on my birthday and bought me Budd. I think it was the first time I realised that music could have  so much power and be almost completely devoid of a tune. I flogged that EP to death before finally ordering a copy of Two Nuns and a Packmule. 

The one thing about Two Nuns and a Packmule is that despite the dodgy titles of the songs Albini liberally takes the piss out of himself. On one track he threatens violence before realising that he is a nerdy geek who is going to get flattened should he go through with his threat. Rapeman certainly  generate a big fucking noise and I've always preferred Two Nuns and a Packmule to most of the stuff Albini did with Big Black. I don't doubt that had they chosen a safer name it certainly would have been heard by far more people. It's a shame that more people haven't heard this, but if you have any interest in the Touch and Go/Chicago hardcore scene of the late 1980's this has to be a definite add to your collection.

#001

*For Megan

1. Big Black - Dead Billy
2. Rapeman - Trouser Minnow
3. Scratch Acid - Lay Screaming
4. Jay Reatard - My Shadow
5. Joy Division - Isolation
6. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus, Dig!!!
7. Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
8. Mogwai - Ratts of the Capital
9. Red House Painters - Medicine Bottle
10. Will Oldham - Apocalypse, No!
11. Okkervil River - A Favor
12. Hefner - The Librarian
13. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Bobby Malone Moves Home
14. M83 - Safe
15. Xiu Xiu - Clover
16. Grandaddy - This Is How It Always Starts...

Download

The Breeders

Pod Demos

http://www.mediafire.com/?xkeytnkyt0i

At the time, The Pixies were my favorite band in the universe. The Smiths and Cocteau Twins were runners-up. My teenage mind latched onto Frank Black's primal screams on Surfer Rosa and loved the eclectic smorgasbord of Doolittle. This teenage mind liked Bossanova and told Trompe Le Monde to talk to the hand. I saw them with the Ciure and Love and Rockets and my heart swooned at the possibilities of music. Now I am much older and calloused and I look back and wonder why I thought their first two albums were a door to all that was new. I still view Loveless, Queen is Dead, Heaven or Las Vegas and Viva Hate as impeccable gems, but the Pixies just haven't aged well with me.

The Breeders' debut, Pod, is a horse of a different color. It still gets played regularly and it grows more loved with each listen. I like First Splash a lot and find something to love on the other two, but the overall legacy is weak except for Pod. I used the term "supergroup" already today, but here we go on our hackneyed path again. In my mind, the Breeders were much more than Kim Deal. The band included Tanya Donnely of Throwing Muses, Josephine Wiggins of The Perfect Disaster and Britt Walford of Slint, who recorded under the alias of Shannon Doughton to preserve the all-girl flair. When you listen to the demos for Pod, it becomes apparent that they had a lot more to do with its success than you may think.

Pod was produced and engineered by Steve Albini. Known for his work with  Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac as well as production credits on albums by Nirvana, Superchunk Page and Plant and Pj Harvey. It was always obvious that he beefed up the sound of Pod, but one listen to the demos and it points to how Albini and Britt Walford made this album a great one instead of a good one. The demos include all of the Kim Deal tracks and excludes the Beatles cover as well as a few others. The demos are a great insight into the creation of the album and stand on their own as an album, but it lacks the forboding, metallic guitars and creepy atmosphere of the finished product. Yes, this is the case with most demos, but the contrast is schocking.

In the finished product, Walford's drumming is pushed to the forefront and is recorded higher in the mix than than Deal's vocals at times. In addition, Deal and Donnely's guitars sounds more abrasive and harsh while Wiggs' bass is prominent and drives each track with an air of aggression. The finished product is genius while the demos sounds almost twee. There is no Pod as wel know it without the pounding drums of Walford and Albini's raw reconstruction of these songs. You may say this is unfair since these are demos. However, the band's direction after Pod shows that they were always a catchy pop band with rough edges instead of the infinitely more interesting band which recorded Pod.

und nur so nebenbei erwähnt: ein blick in den terminkalender lohnt sich heute auf alle fälle!

Tracklist

Baroness - Isak
Neu! - Neuschnee
Wire - Strange
Young Marble Giants - Clicktalk
Gogogo Airheart - Taxi Up
Nels Cline - Lonnies Lament
Dosh - Wolves
Dyse - Monstermann
Kayo Dot - Right Hand is The One I want
JME - A.W.O.H
Animal Collective - Kids On Holiday
Boxcutter - Rusty Break
Melvins - Suicide in Progress
Yes - Siberian Khatru
Rapeman - Log Bass
Auto Da Fe - Just Now
Weakling - This Entire Fucking Battlefield

Enough drivel from me, the tracklist was as follows:

Big Business - Hands Up
The Wedding Present - My Favourite Dress
Of Montreal - Rapture Rapes The Muse
Suicide - Ghost Rider
Mike Ladd - Airwave Hysteria
Miasma and the Carousel Of Headless Horse - Manticore
Justin Timberlake - My Love
Milanese - Mr. Ion
Jens Lekman - Maple Leaves
Heldon (featuring Gilles Deleuze) - 'Ouais Marchais, Mieux Qu'en 68 [ex- 'le Voyageur']'
She & Him - Change Is Hard
Rapeman - Hated Chinee
Crystal Castles - Courtship Dating

The next show will be Monday 14th April 2008.

Rapeman was an American noise rock group founded in 1987 and disbanded in 1989. It consisted of Steve Albini (formerly of Big Black) on guitar and vocals, David Wm. Sims (formerly of Scratch Acid) on bass, and Rey Washam (formerly of Scratch Acid and Big Boys) on drums.

In an interview, Albini reported that 'Rapeman' is "... the title character in a Japanese comic book that I had come across through a friend of mine. The comic book is just a total mind-bender. There's a whole genre of comics in Japan, rape stories where women are raped in really graphic detail for whatever reason, and it's an amazing thing that this is just an accepted part of their sort of normal popular culture."[1] Albini and Washam became "sort of obsessed" with the comic, and named their new group after the titular antihero.

Rapeman's performances would often be the target of protestors, who felt that the band was mocking or even encouraging rape and violence against women. Albini has described such criticisms as idiotic, arguing that punk ideology is generally very sympathetic to feminism.

The playing style at times was reminiscent of more traditional noise punk (as on "Up Beat"), at other times cranky art-rock (as on "Monobrow"), their sound gave centre stage to the signature guitar style of Albini.

The band broke up for personal reasons, but not, as has been rumoured, over a dispute relating to their name. Albini launched his career as a recording engineer and played bass with Flour before going on to form Shellac. Sims reunited with ex-Scratch Acid vocalist David Yow to form The Jesus Lizard. [wikipedia]

Discography

* "Hated Chinee b/w Marmoset" 7"
* "Budd" EP
* "Two Nuns and a Pack Mule" LP (1988)
* "Inki's Butt Crack b/w Song Number One" (Sub Pop Singles Club 7")

To paraphrase Steve Albini (The madman behind Big Black); It's easy to piss off the "squares," it's much more fun pissing off "hipsters." (Words to live by).

Big Black was oft referred to as "Noise Rock," but Albini insisted they were Punk. Whatever they were, they were unforgettable.

Listening to Big Black is like listening to someone grind metal or maybe Big Black is what a Factory would sound like if it wrote music. Big Black is a fork scratched across a plate.

Big Black never wrote a song you could hum, shit after listening to them for a while you can barely think, and that was intentional.

Big Black's music is a testament to the world many want to ignore, a world that is harsh, cold and brutal. A world outside the sugary pop music that fills our culture, and the pristine "white" images we are bombarded with every day on our televisions.

After Big Black broke up, Albini went on to play with Rapeman and Shellac (with whom he still plays). He also works as a Recording Engineer putting out albums by The Jesus Lizard, Pixies, PJ Harvey, and Louisville's very own Slint (Who I will post about very soon).

Steelworker

CheekyScouseTwat

L Dopa

thesesails

The only good policeman is a dead one
The only good laws aren't enforced
I've never hung a darkie, even a big one
I've never seen an Indian on a horse
And I live like this 'cause I like it
And seen too much to pretend
You can't ignore the beauty in the things that you love
Like you can't stand the hatred and the lies
Have you always hunted with your hands?
Can you show me what you've done?
Have you always hunted with your hands?
If you catch it, can you kill it?
You don't understand, see you don't understand
See, I'm like a murderer, see, I'm like a murderer
And I could rip you limb from limb
And I could rip you limb from limb
Great big thing crawlin' all over me
Great big thing crawlin' all over me
See, I'm like a murderer, I kill what I eat
See, I'm like a, I'm a hunter-gatherer, see, I kill what I eat
See, I'm a steelworker, I kill what I eat
See, I'm, I'm a bricklayer, I kill what I eat
See, I'm a, I'm a murderer, I kill what I eat
See, I'm a, I'm a hunter-gatherer, I kill what I eat
See, I'm a steelworker, I kill what I eat
I'm a, I'm a bricklayer, I kill what I eat
Great big thing crawling all over me
Great big thing crawling all over me
Great big thing crawling all over me
Have you always hunted with your hands?
Can you show me what you've done?
Have you always hunted with your hands?
If you catch it, can you kill it?
I live like this 'cause I like it
And I've seen too much to pretend
You can't ignore the beauty in the things that you love
Like you can't stand the hatred and the lies
See, see, see I'm a murderer, I kill what I eat
See, I'm, I'm a bricklayer, I kill what I eat
See, I'm a steelworker, I kill what I eat
It's a great big thing crawlin' all over me
Great big thing crawlin' all over me
Great big thing crawlin' all over me

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