The Bottom Is The Best Place To Be

I'll concede that maybe this record occupies one of the lower rungs among all of Halo of Flies' vinyl output, but it's still pretty good -- I mean, it's damn Halo of Flies. I've probably already said this before, but Halo of Flies are on the list of bands that permanently re-directed my listening habits from the first time I heard them: Halo of Flies, Nig-Heist, and the Thrown-Ups. And Negative Approach. "I'm Clean" has the handclaps, so it must be the 'hit'.




Halo of Flies -

"Garbage Rock"

"I'm Clean"

I Wouldn't Piss On Your Body If Your Heart Was On Fire

Speaking of the greatest rock outfits of the past quarter-century... super-crackly bootleg/Monkees Fan Club edition of the "Winged" 7" that was originally given away with one issue of Forced Exposure or another; this (a Cramps cover and a Urinals cover) plus the "Headburn" EP should be all it takes to convince anyone of the beauty and greatness that was Halo of Flies... includes a reworked "Ballad of Extreme Hate" tacked onto the end of side two, which has never been mentioned in any of the discographies I've seen (perhaps they didn't recognize what it was). There you go, I solved that mystery for you.





Halo of Flies -

"Human Fly"

"I'm a Bug"

"Ballad of Extreme Hate"

You're A Waste Of Time

Five or six years after their first 7" and Halo of Flies were still releasing fierce-sounding records, as evidenced by this 1991 single. Now, six years might not sound like a long time, but what are the chances that your favorite new band today will still be putting out their A-Grade material six years from now? If they're anything like the washed-out fake-indie crap that shows up in my in-box every day, my guess is "no fucking way".

This also happens to be my favorite Halo of Flies 7" sleeve, representing HoF's "Mod" phase or something (maybe it's because they're Mods is why you can barely hear the guitar solo on "Tired & Cold"). I don't know if Henry Owings (see this, by the way, it's great) is going to come in here and give a nod to Haze's particular graphic design on this one, but I thinks he oughta.




Halo of Flies -

"Tired & Cold"

"Wasted Time"

(These files are now listen-only. Also, I don't know why Blogger has such a tough time transferring reds; if you click on the above links and look at the sleeve photo, the red letters are as they should really appear)

I Want My Head To Burn

The last Halo of Flies thing that I posted (the "Four From The Bottom" cassette) was fairly excellent, but this beats the crap out of anything on that. In fact, "Headburn" could be the best Halo of Flies single ever; a pretty tall order, I know, but being on a nice fat-sounding 12-inch certainly doesn't hurt. I mean, this thing will take your whole damn head off in a second if you're not careful. And am I going to go against protocol and post all three songs? FUCK YEAH!! See you in hell, bitches!! Hello, Cleveland!! Rock and roll! Rock and roll!




Halo of Flies -

"Headburn"

"Easy or Hard"

"Father Paranoia"

(these files are now listen-only)

This ain't no heartfelt shit, this is Halo of Flies

A limited-run cassette, "Four From The Bottom" compiles the first four Halo of Flies seven-inchers ('85-'87), all four of which were pressed in ridiculously low numbers and thus disappeared quickly. Having released a bunch of really ace Halo of Flies records that all sold out in a matter of weeks and that nobody could friggin' find anymore, Am Rep's solution was to put them all together on inherently low-fi and flimsy magnetic tape in an even more limited edition (only 200 of these cassettes were made), tack on an MC5 cover as a bonus track, and there you go. Problem solved!

If by chance that there's anyone out there who hasn't heard Halo of Flies before, then dig in. For everyone else, I'll leave out the part about how Halo of Flies and Am Rep came close to ruining record collecting forever, by influencing hundreds of imitators and insuring that 70% of the indie 45s released over the next 5 or 6 years would be misanthropic noise in limited pressings of 300 or less. Hazelmyer's songwriting ability ranked head and shoulders above most of the field at that time, and that alone should be enough, I guess.

Since I doubt that my rips from a wobbly 20-year-old cassette are gonna take away much from the CD-quality versions that are available on "Music for Insect Minds", I'm gonna go ahead and put up a higher percentage of tracks here than I usually would (leaving off all but two: "Pipebomb", and the Creation cover, "How Does It Feel To Feel"). A couple of the tracks-- "Rubber Room" in particular-- even sound a bit to me like they were recorded for this comp from vinyl instead of the master tape, though that wouldn't be the first time that's happened (re: the semi-legendary Agnostic Front Example, in which my official Rat Cage cassette of "Victim In Pain" had been obviously recorded from the vinyl LP, and even had a skip in it. True story!).



Halo of Flies -

"Rubber Room"

"DDT Fin 13"

"M.D. 20/20"

"Richies Dog"

"Thoughts in a Booth"

"Can't Touch Her"

"Sinner Sings"

"Drunk (In Detroit)"

(these files are now listen-only)