Gangrene – Demos and rarities…

I haven’t put anything on the blog for quite sometime, I’ve been expanding my own musical taste for a bit as anyone my age does (or at least I hope), but I thought a good return post would be something that is of personal note to me. Torture Music is still more than willing to feed you some music, this time it’s of mine own creation along with some close friends of mine. Gangrene my second band, it had solid stint of at least four to five years. I believe it was at the end of my sophomore year in high school that my good friend Zac (drum extraordinaire) and myself (guitar and vocals) started jamming after school, of which consisted mostly sessions of Misfits and Metallica covers. The sessions also consisted of dorky musical arguments as to how certain structures to certain songs by these musical artists went. But eventually it became a full band.  I don’t recall the first show that we played publicly but our live appearances were many.

The core members were Zac and myself. We ran through a few bass players, and even played a few shows as a two-piece just drums and guitar. Finally, Fitz (bass extraordinaire) started to jam with us. It was the tightest band I’ve ever played with, and as a whole we shared a great musical/electrical connection. These recordings span the career of the band as a full project. From the early tape cassette demo jams to the four track analog recording (which Zac taught himself how to use) to the live recordings of our last live show, which was also M.I.A.’s last. Although rough and trebly they represent a great amount of hours and a great deal of fun. Each of us honing skill in our own personal role in the band. We never officially broke up so the future will tell…

Tracks appear in chronological order:

These were recorded straight onto cassette and given away at early shows (Myke Gylmore on bass guitar).

Dead You can hear me say bridge into the microphone at 1:12, classic.

Stepping Stone A cover of The Monkees standard.

National Anthem This jam quickly became the set closer song for live shows, it was one of the first we learned as a group

Superfast Jawbreaker

Fostex 4-track basement recordings (Fitz Doubet on bass guitar!!!)

Pernicious Wicked

Hell’s Last Angel Although the vocals aren’t audible they can be heard, as they were recorded over onto another track.

There were a few other songs from these sessions that have been eaten up by musical history.

Another from the era:

Sonic Reducer Dead Boys cover, also done in Zac’s basement. Fitz singing the harmony.

The rest of the songs were recorded live at the Washington, IL Legion or VFW hall.

I Wanna Be An Idiot (Live) This along with Hell’s Last Angel were my favorite songs we penned. (Lyrics by Zac)

S&F (Live)

Slipping Through the Cracks [Again] (Live) A version of this existed at one time in 4-track fashion.

Although the sound may not be of highest fidelity the levels of each instrument in the “mix” is actually pretty damn good considering the different methods of recording.

Check back soon for new music adventures!

Good Clean Fun Filtered Through A Sex Booth

I was recently reminded of an image I saw a few years ago a truly XXX version what people seem to think Disney and his attempts to sell sex to children subliminally through dick-shaped underwater land formations and other things. But here is an artists interpretation of what he thought Disney characters might actually be doing if they were allowed to…

It also reminded me of a painting I wrote a paper on. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (early 1500′s) by Heironymus Bosch, a Netherlandish painter…

Here’s a link to the Wiki entry on the Disney image:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disneyland_Memorial_Orgy

The Restraints

The Restraints

These guys were active in the late 70′s, early 80′s, and are claimed to be Atlanta, GA’s first punk band.  Their ditties are hilarious, and the front man does the job of being highly entertaining, posing in various S&M-style photos. The material is mostly uptempo, the ditties’ content mainly pertain to debauchery and sin.  The singer Chris wood died in prison, a character know for sticking needles into his skull during live performances. He died while in jail, after being convicted of murder charges.

These are from a demo recording made in 1980. Band never released any vinyl, but Mr. Wood went onto release a single with a different band later on.

So here we go, bar thug punk courtesy of The Restraints: DIG IT, YA HEAR?!

A Bit Much

Marie

Wacka Wacka

For  your viewing pleasure:

The band doing a live rendition of Marie, gotta love the added guitar fills during the third verse!

The band doing an actual music video for the ditty “I Can’t Be A Nun”, roll-on-the-floor funny theatrics and some bad lip-syncing. The intro is priceless, howbung!

And if you’d like to get these ditties yourself, here’s a link to a cd release

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/restraints

Snake Bite Juice Pt. 2

Here is another set of songs that I have an extremely good time listening to, and so will you…

You’re Gonna Die – Destroy All Monsters: Post-Stooges, Ron Asherton group with female vocals.

Paralyzed – The Legendary Stardust Cowboy: This was actually released by the major record company Capitol Records. Check out the horn solo!!!

Animal Man – Kim Fowley: Good time woogie-hoogie-boogie rock with awesome vocals and lyrics.

Popcorn – Hot Butter: Completely nauseating exercise music. Each instrument plays a dissorienting part, and by the time they are all played, it gets a little unsettling.

I Could Puke – White Boy: Inept rock.

Do It – The Pink Fairies: Hard-rockin’ roadhouse punk.

Oh How To Do Now – The Monks: A demo version that would later be re-recorded for Polydor Records, played with a differnt ryhthym.

I’m Not Like Everybody Else – Hubble Bubble: Another classic 60′s song (done by The Kinks) by this awesome Belgian rock band.

Strangulation – Fear: This was originally on More Beer, but was omitted from the cd release.

The Night Nothing Became Everything / I Think You Know – Nomeansno: The tracks are actually separate on the album, but I spliced them together, because the second song sounds like the first song, just arranged and played backwards with vocals put ontop, really sweet.

In The Year 2525 – Zagar and Evans: This song was played to my eighth grade class by our English teacher for some fucking reason. But for some reason I like the song now.

Rubber Biscuit – The Chips: I put this on a mixed cd that was being played in a van to like six other people. We had been driving all day, after being on the road for a good few days. The song started playing about five minutes from our destination. It added to the already delirious hysterics that were happening inside the vehicle, the lyrics very fitting.

Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet

Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet – Love Without Words (1985, Jetpac)

These guys don’t like being called a surf band, they went as far as to record a song called “We’re Not A Fucking Surf Band”.

Awesome instrumental music, each player having their own parts to songs and each being very good at their instuments.

Side 1

Our Weapons Are Useless

Side 2

Bennett Cerf

Having An Average Weekend

The last song may be familiar, it was the theme song from Kids In The Hall, a great sketch comedy group that went onto do their series. Shadowy did all of the music for all of the shows, and did a different version of “Having An Average Weekend”. Both groups are Canadians, and both rock!

All of their releases are excellent.

Red Cross

Red Cross – Annette’s Got The Hits EP (1981)

Red Cross debuted on vinyl with Steve and Jeff McDonald, Greg Hetson, and Ron Reyes. The EP really cooks; hard-hitting, poppy, and all around sounding very tight for the ages of some of the members.

The band would go through various member changes, with the brothers staying consistant. Always seeming to feel like they should fit into the cult band status. Having followers that would do anything for them, I wouldn’t, but I think some people would be willing. The band is awesome.

1. Cover Band

2. I Hate My School

3. Annette’s Got The Hits

4. Clorox Girls

5. S&M Parties

6. Standing In Front Of A Posuer

Naked Hippy

Naked Hippy – 1989

Here we have Naked Hippy, from Normal, IL, the current town I reside in. They played shows with Impetigo (posted earlier) and others.  I wish these guys were still around. The LP is awesome, intensely fast, and with awesome lyrics that would be expected. Not slagging on them at all, I enjoy them as equally as anything.

1. I’m A Problem

2. Fucked In The Head

3. T.V. Set

4. Fast Food Pig Out

5. Work

6. My Favorite Yuppie

7. Too Much Thinking

8. Enquirer

9. Surf Song

10. Trapped

11. Anti-Love

12. Fuckin’ Ed

13. Conservative Fag

14. Trend

15. No Sex, No Drugs, No Rock and Roll

16. Dead End World

17. Love Song

18. Just Another Day

19. You Lied

20. Run Like Mad

21. Destroy

22. Cinderella (Sonics)

I know Jeff Wilson, who is part owner of North Street Records, (excellent record shop) is trying to get this thing issued onto cd.

He is currently at work with The Resinators.   http://www.myspace.com/theresinators

Snake Bite Juice Pt. 1

In Natural Born Killers theres a scene where Woody Harrelson is going scrambing through a grocery store, looking for treatment to a snake bite. He’s calling out “where’s the snake bite juice? where is it!?”. It makes me laugh everytime. He’s a total bizerk redneck and even if he knew the name of a treatment he wouldn’t call it by the name, he’d just say “snake bite juice”.

So that’s what I’m gonna call these installments of music. No matter how much crappy music you have to endure, you gotta find something that you can tap your finger to. A cure for the disease that is crappy music, we’ll just see if you enjoy any of em.

Only the Stones Remain – The Soft Boys: Only the stones, Mick Jagger, and cockroaches will remain.

Spazz – The Elastik Band: Really cool ditty that has a nice rocking back and forth motion in the verses.

Paint It Black – Half Japanese: Doing a painful, yet bliss filled, version of the Stones.

Demolicion – Los Saicos: Awesome, primitive, 16th note bass lined, thudder.

(I’m) Chewin’ Gum – Cream Soda: “I’m Chewing Gun, yea, I’m Chewing Gum, alright, I’m Chewing Gun. Ouch, uh Gimme Some!”

Bomb Iran – Uptown: The fact that they did this to Barbara Ann is unreal.

Fuck Is Not A Dirty Word – David Peel and the Lower East Side: Mr. Peel gives an English lesson on the word Fuck.

Be Stiff – Devo: Doing a song off the the band’s second EP, Be Stiff. It rocks pretty hard, and sounds very glammy.

Freakin’ Out – Death: From Detroit, the band is made up of the three Hackney brothers, and with their powers combined, they kill.

Veteran’s Day Poppy – Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band: Insane sounding blues. Greatness if you can wrap your head around it.

It’s My Life – Crushed Butler: Early 70′s British hard rock.

Devil’s Grip – The Crazy World of Arthur Brown: His voice is amazing.

Boogeyman Rock

So some people might post their top ten superbowl moments or their top ten recipes for frito pie, but at Torture music we post the top ten songs about psychokillers. I purchased this book at a store in El Paso, Texas when it was summer between my sophomore and  junior year in high school. It was on the sale table, and I picked it up and thought, ‘hey why not’. I was with a friend visiting his mom, and when we got back to the house I started skimming through the book, it was pretty frightening to read. The A to Z Encyclopida of Serial Killers. There are many alphabetic categories such as: Ritual, Escape, Bathubs…and you guessed it Songs. So let’s get the list going.

1. Excitable Boy – Warren Zevon.  The ditty is relatively pleasant sounding, but the lyrics are pretty uh descriptive of this boy’s behavior and life. The song has some nice female back ups too.

2. Psycho Killer – Talking Heads.

3. Murder by Numbers – The Police. Sting and co deliver this laid back ditty with pretty brutal lyrics of how to turn murder into art, and how easy it is to do along the way.

4. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer – The Beatles. A catchy song, with, what sounds kind of like claves, played at the perfect time during the chorus.

5. Dead Skin Mask – Slayer. The first song about an actual person, Ed Gein.

6. Heidnik’s House of Horrors – Serial Killers. This one is also about an actual person, Gary Heidnik, a creep on doubletime.

7. Nebraska – Bruce Springstein. About Charles Starkweather, really bad ditty though.

8. I Love the Dead – Alice Cooper.

9. Look At Your Game Girl – Guns ‘N Roses. A cover version of ditty penned by none other than Charlie “Don’t Do That” Manson.

10. Albert Albert – The Bugs. A pretty cool arrangement by these guys.

Bonus Tracks, not on the books list.

Night Prowler – AC/DC. Must’ve been where the media got the nickname for Richard Ramirez, since he left an AC/DC hat at one scene.

Homicide – 999. Anthemic song about…

Son of Sam – Chain Gang. A pretty jagged sounding song, but it rules.

Midnight Rambler – The Rolling Stones. A seven minute blues jam, that has the most haunting slide guitar lines. It also has to have some of the most haunting lyrics too, it really puts that whole “you can never tell what they look like” “facelessness” of a killer.

So don’t listen to these in the dark, or do. Sorry I don’t know how to do podcasts, I haven’t learned but am considering, because I think these go together pretty seamlessly.

X – Aspirations

X – Aspirations (1979)

The band was from Sydney, Australia.  And my oh my they fucking rock. Heavy bass and drum driven tracks with, at times minimum guitar playing.  Each track is a winner, not one second of filler on the album, which was, according to the inlay, recorded in a mere five hours, pretty awesome! This is classic primitive, primal rock. During certain moments of each listen I get shivers in my body, music that makes you feel that inside is pretty damn good.

They would go onto do another ablum that I haven’t heard in a while, but remember kind of being as not impressed, but I may change my mind the next time I hear it. Members would go onto form Rose Tattoo.

Like I said, for me there aren’t any bad songs, they all surpass greatness, so I tried to pick my favorites. I give you the amazing X…

Suck Suck

Present

Simulated Lovers

Police

Revolution

Turn My Head

Good On Ya Baby

Delinquent Cause

I Don’t Wanna Go Out

Lipstick

It Must Be Me

Coat Of Green

Waiting

Batman