You Don't Even Talk To Me Anymore

This is the first 7" from Her Tears, a band that among all of the '90s Danbury bands had one of the more impeccable track records. This early single is way Manchester and doesn't rock out nearly as hard as what came out afterwards, but the b-side, "Darling", still ranks among my favorite Connecticut singles sides from that decade. I'm only guessing that they were attempting some kind of Inspiral Carpets-type thing here, but in hindsight "Darling" sounds more like a Geffen-era Girls Against Boys song if you added a lot of extra wah-wah and recorded it inside an empty metal box. The a-side, "5:30 Blue", is almost too mopey, but that's okay, because by being there it makes the b-side sound that much better. The first couple of times I played this record, I'd drop the needle on the a-side, scrunch my nose a bit, and then quickly flip the record over, and then "Darling" would end up sounding ten times more rocking in comparison. Now you can do the same thing.




Her Tears -

"5:30 Blue"

"Darling"

If Everything Goes As Planned

I think I promised that I was going to write about this compilation three years ago, though obviously other things intervened in the meantime, like maybe I was too busy writing about Punchbuggy records or something. Anyway, Popfactory was a pretty ace little indie-pop label from the Tri-State area back in the 90's, prone to fuzzy stuff, and the "Gift From Sing-Sing" compilation was a collection of the label's early 7"-ers, along with some other unreleased stuff. All I have now is the CD version, but this also came out on LP, and that's what I originally reviewed in my zine (Brushback) way back when. The CD might have some extra tracks that aren't on the LP, I sorta forget. I still have some of the original Popfactory 7"-ers that are on this compilation-- Razor 18, Sunhead, Heartworms, and Her Tears of course-- besides the fact that I've already posted Her Tears' "Ultra-Crush" (Popfactory #1) as a vinyl rip from the 7", which now you'll be able to get as a CD track with "superior" CD resolution (arf arf). I'd go on but the compilation's liner notes are pretty extensive, so read those instead.




Sunhead -

"Seasonal"

Razor 18 -

"P Street Beach"

Heartworms -

"If Everything Goes As Planned"

Saturnine -

"Like a Kite"

Her Tears -

"Lady Killer"

"Ultra-Crush"

Blessed Ethel -

"Veronica"


The full CD, which I'll leave up for about a week or so:

A Gift From Sing-Sing CD (Popfactory, 1996).zip

I Wanna Do My Hair In More Of A '90s Fashion

There were a bunch of CT indie compilations that came out in the early to mid '90s, all of them featuring mainly Danbury area bands, and all of them worth hunting down: the "Chop Whip Grate Liquefy" LP/CD on MUDD, the "One" EP that Capsule put out, "Destroy All Mediocrity" on TPOS (Malcolm Tent's label), and the Frozen Monkey CD. Out of all of them, "Destroy All Mediocrity" was the most ambitious-- a three-record set (12", 10", and 7"), all on colored vinyl, plus a cassette and a zine. A CD was also included with each set, but that was only so that Malcolm could take a bunch of dollar-bin CDs (one of mine was the New Jack City soundtrack) and write nasty things on them; "Total scam", "Cheap crap", "Boycott the CD format" and so forth.

Around 500 sets of "Destroy All Mediocrity" were made, with about 4 to 6 different cover variations, depending upon who you talk to. The covers were actual carnival posters, printed at the Triangle Poster Co. in Pittsburgh, and then folded in two or three places to hold all of the records in place before being sealed inside a huge poly bag. All of this assembling was done by hand, I'm sure, and so along with the cassette and the records, a whole stack of leftover goodies from the TPOS back catalog were also tossed inside each bag-- unused 7" picture sleeves, LP center labels, J-cards from cassette demos, zines, and whatever else.




Some of the leftover sleeves, labels, and crap that were in my copies
One result of all of these extra goodies-- most likely unforseen at the time-- was that, after spending years in a crate stacked upright with all of my other records leaning on it, the cassette (along with everything else) would press against the vinyl records and cause all kinds of bending and scuffing, to the point where none of the three "Destroy All Mediocrity" LPs that I own are anywhere near flat, with a good amount of surface noise also involved. But, you know, D.I.Y. and all that, is still a beautiful thing.



Another one of the front cover variations
There's almost an hour and 40 minutes' worth of music included in this whole set, including the "Mop Tape" which is actually its own separate release (TPOS-50, as opposed to TPOS-100), but since the Mop Tape and the vinyl were released together on the same day, I've given all the mp3's the same tags. I ripped every damn song on the compilation except for two (sorry, no Chicken Doody Faget for you), and all of the leftover songs that I'm not posting individually, including every song on the Mop Tape, will be available for a little while as their own "Mop Files" .zip file towards the bottom of this post.

The overview that "Destroy All Mediocrity" gives of the Danbury, CT scene at the time is fairly mind-boggling; by my interpretation, a full 16 of the bands here are all from one town, which is truly impressive. Malcolm, of course, was good enough to see that a whole variety of styles and bands were included on the compilation, not just Danbury bands; for instance, there are a bunch of "Confederacy of Scum" bands on here (Anti-Seen, Cocknoose, Mad Brother Ward, and the like), as well as some crazy electronic stuff (Punch Drunk, from Philadelphia) and even a black metal side project (!!), Havohej. I'm going to focus mainly on the Danbury bands, so this is what you're getting:

Stubb - I think I gave their 7-inch a bad review, but Stubb were actually really good the one time I saw them live, and their song here might be my favorite one on the whole compilation... besides referencing A Tribe Called Quest.
Her Tears - Her Tears are almost definitely the most criminally forgotten of all the '90s Danbury bands; they released a bunch of great singles and compilation tracks, and their shoegaze-y pop sound seemed almost perfect for the SpinArt/Slumberland/Parasol type sound that was pretty big at the time, but they never really took off. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart fans, take note (actually, please go away now).
Freakbaby - Four-and-a-half-minute guitar jams aren't necessarily my idea of fun, but still, it's Freakbaby. You'll get over it, like I did.
Creature Did - I think Kevin always felt burdened by the "Nirvana" tag, not that this song helps matters much. Still, "Come In" is most definitely rocking, and would've deserved a better re-recording, though I don't think that ever happened.
HED - Most HED songs are too over-the-top for me to even keep up with-- this song sounds like what would happen if you took the first Phantom Tollbooth and Dinosaur LPs and melted them together-- but you can tell that they must've been a monster band to see live. Jim Roberto is now in Creepdust, a great '79 S.F. style p-rock outfit (à la Negative Trend), that is if they're still around.
G'nu Fuz - Folk/blues-type rock with some really inventive playing-- most of the time when I listen to their records I go, "There's no other band I like that can pull this off." The entire G'nu Fuz discography is downloadable at their web site-- www.gnufuz.com-- and there's some really awesome stuff there.
Shyster, Shyster, and Flywheel - NOTE: This track skips! This woulda been one of my most-listened-to songs on the comp, except that NOTE (anal retentives and other uptight aitch-moes): This track skips! I've collected three sets of this compilation over the years, and the Shyster Shyster and Flywheel track skips in the same place on all three copies. I'm including it anyway, because the song is great, and the band featured Bruce Wingate and Bill Knapp and is otherwise an adjunct to my coffee table book, "Please Kill Punk Rock Before Bill Knapp Joins Another Band", which I never got to finish back in the '90s. P.S. Maybe if you ask nicely I'll e-mail you an mp3 of "Greek Diner Morning", which totally kills.
Malcolm Tent - It's his comp, so I gotta include his song. It's a pretty little instrumental, actually-- almost like that one Big Star outtake-- and somewhat different from Malcolm's "agressive acoustic punk stylings" that I'm more used to.
Leadfoot - I think they're a Danbury band, since they were also on Malcolm's "Songs To Make You Shiver" Halloween compilation. Grungy hair-wag, way more rhythmically competent than a lot of the stuff on here, I guess.
China Pig - Not their usual atmospheric post-rock output; this one has a really strong Breadwinner/Honor Role-like guitar riff.
Allawiscious Pole -A freak-folk track riddled with shards of noise and feedback, completely predicts the '00s if you know what I mean. One of my favorite tracks on the compilation. Don't bother asking me who this is, though, I really have no friggin' clue.
Bunnybrains - Legendary kitchen-sink-rock outfit, their song here sounds like it could be a Crystalized Movements track left over from "Mind Disaster" (go listen to "Communal Storybook" and see if I'm not right).
Monsterland - A really blown-out version of "Chris' Clone", and nothing like the version that's on "Loser Friendly". I've never seen this listed on the track listing for any of their demos, so I have no idea where this is from... mostly because it's not "Chris' Clone" at all, but a song called "Flesh Machine (Fuddhoney)" (dig the reference). Thanks to Greg Vegas for clearing that up.
Closet Full of Fear - Noise project from the '80s featuring some guys who would go on to be in HED and Monsterland. Pretty fun, when you think of it that way.

The 12":

Stubb -

"El Segundo"

Her Tears -

"Spin"

Shyster, Shyster, and Flywheel -

"Joan, The Monkey Loves You"
(fucker skips, just so you know)

Freakbaby -

"Freak Baby vs. The Dead C"

Creature Did -

"Come In"

Bunnybrains -

"Creepin' Round Yer Winder"

Leadfoot -

"Angel Dust"

Malcolm Tent -

"Gladly, The Cross-Eyed Bear"




The 10":

Monsterland -

"Flesh Machine (Fuddhoney)"

G'nu Fuz -

"Bunkhouse Tales"

Closet Full of Fear -

"4:52"

China Pig -

"Merkel Gortex"





The 7":

HED -

"Magic Monkey"

Allawiscious Pole -

"Crawlin' Blues"







Here's the file with the rest of the tracks, including the Mop Tape:

Destroy All Mediocrity mop files.zip

Also included with the compilation was a 16-page zine listing the entire TPOS discography (of which "Destroy All Mediocrity" was release #100) in pretty good detail, plus accounts of Malcolm's misadventures that came with releasing GG Allin and Anti-Seen records that the pressing plant was constantly rejecting and so forth. It makes for a nice brisk read (and you'll need to read it to find clues as to who Drakarr and The Warr really was), so I've made a .zip file of the scans of all 16 pages, which you can grab here:

TPOS 100 zine images.zip

There's two sample pages from the zine at the very bottom of this post, if you want to check those out first (as always, clicking on the images will give you a larger copy).




M.U.D.D.-issued poetry zine that was in one of my copies




I also got a couple of old The Piece of Shit one-sheets;
here's one side of one of them







Two sample pages from the zine that came with the compilation

Put The Queen Back On The Shelf

A compilation of four great Danbury bands, "One" was released on Her Tears' Matt Chiavelli's Capsule imprint (go ahead and Google it, it's still around). I can't remember the exact year this came out and darn it if there isn't a date on either the label or the sleeve to help me out, but I'm positive it was either '94 or '95. Whatever the year, this gets my vote for best Ct. indie 7" comp ever, especially since almost every band on here was either peaking or just beginning to hit their stride. I'm leaving the Stubb track out because it's nowhere near their best, but Creature Did and Atlas, especially, released nothing but great stuff from this point on, and the Her Tears track remains one my favorite Ct. 7-inch sides ever.

The evidence:

Creature Did - If thunderous riffage and lots of random feedback are your thing, try this on for size. The 90's Danbury scene rocked your ass off, and I'm here to prove it.
Atlas - Atlas is responsible for two of the absolute best Ct. records of the 90's (their "Confusion Comforts Me" 7-inch and a self-titled CD); here, they cover one of Danbury transplant Bruce Wingate's songs off of Adrenalin O.D.'s infamous 1989 turd, "Ishtar", which is a completely brilliant and hilarious idea if you ask me.
Her Tears - Easily the best Her Tears song out of many great ones; the distorted bass riff kills me, and just when you think it couldn't get any better the song downshifts at the very end, like a little shoegazer mosh part. Would that I had a better way to offer it than from this crappy 7" pressing, but it's still killer.

Creature Did -

"I Am Immune"

Atlas -

"Joe From Lodi"

Her Tears -

"Pill Cutter"

(these files are now listen-only)

I Suggest You Just Get Over Yourself

It would probably be an understatement for me to say that Her Tears are unheralded, seeing as they came from a Danbury scene that relatively no one outside of Ct. cared about then or can recall now anyway ("next Seattle" legend be damned). With their hard-edged, fuzzy guitar-pop sound (similar in style to scene-mates Monsterland, though much more pseudo-Brit), Her Tears definitely had the songs to go around. I don't even remember the other bands from Ct. that I interviewed back then acknowledging Her Tears all that much, although that seems kinda funny since Matt Chiavelli ("Matthew Drag") designed the record sleeves for a whole bunch of other Ct. indie releases. Maybe it's because Her Tears never seemed to play out a lot, or maybe it's because they never managed to release an album (though they did have a full-length demo cassette, from '92). Or maybe it's because some of their song titles reminded people of old Ministry records, who knows.

Although their best song can be found elsewhere-- "Pill Cutter", a compilation track that's pretty much awesome-- this is most likely Her Tears' best record. It's also the first release ("Poof #1") for Popfactory, a New York label with a serious Creation fixation (the runout groove for this even reads, "Thanks to Alan McGee for inspiration".) Popfactory had a run of about a dozen or so singles, most of which were moderately great and are worth tracking down. If not, there was compilation LP of Popfactory singles, which I should be posting shortly.




Her Tears -

"Ultra-Crush"

"Moxie"

(these files are now listen-only)