More Unheard Music

August 21, 2010

I’m not feeling particularly surly about anything today. The new issue is done and all I want to do is sit in opaque darkness listening to sound effects records.

Instead, I’m going to get nerdy. Since the fantasy sport team community seems to get bigger every year without any shame whatsoever, I figured I’d play Make Believe Record Store. It’s very simple: I just geek-out in my brain and think of records I would buy in three-quarters of a nanosecond. You think that’s pathetic? Come on, who DIDN’T want to buy a copy of this?

Here are five records that don’t exist. But dammit, life would be pretty fecking glorious if they did.

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
The Land Of Rape And Honey
In which New Jersey’s finest reinvention-core outfit (dig that hot new genre) cover Ministry’s 1988 electro-industri-punk classic in its entirety. Guitarist Ray Toro ups the shred quotient 100 times past Satriani Level 5 on the death-disco standard “Stigmata” and the migraine-inducing “Diety.” And hearing Gerard Way yell “I’m gonna rip his head off/I’m gonna shit down his neck/I’m gonna laugh like a motherfucker” under sheets of distortion during “Flashback” would make me stop collecting music, as I would be soundly convinced I’ve heard everything great the world has to offer. Vinyl version is dusted with powdered rust (coupon for both digital download and tetanus shot included) with 333 jackets dipped in the Gulf of Mexico and the remaining 333 covers dunked in the Love Canal.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
FYATCSBYRIO:The ’90s Hate You box set
A four-disc set compiling the most vicious, jagged and thorny (and unreleased, mind you) tracks to come out of the ’90s underground. A series of 50 songs from such planet-scorching outfits from the era as Helmet, Rapeman, the Jesus Lizard, Halo Of Flies, Unsane, Janitor Joe, Cop Shoot Cop, Gear Jammer, Hammerhead, Nation Of Ulysses, Jawbox and a ton of other bands who raised my car insurance rates that decade. The proposed name of the box is an acronym derived from the title of a track by Iowa Beef Experience, a song so patently vulgar, I can’t type it here with a good conscience. But, hey, three cheers for the internet, right?

BAYONET WAX
Spearing Loss
I once dreamt about seeing this non-existent aggregate featuring Justin Pearson (the Locust, All Leather), Rockey Crane (Kill The Caplets, Some Girls, Year Future), Dustin Donaldson (I Am Spoonbender) and Russell Haswell two years ago. I blogged about it and then asked readers to submit their personal dream-band lineups. I listen to all the records these guys have made in their previous/current groups and I get misty over how this outfit will never come to fruition—but a new BrokenCYDE disc is on the way. Life is that cruel.

THE MARS VOLTA
“Marching Powder” / “Marching Powder” (live) 12-inch single
If your parents don’t have a copy of Tommy Bolin’s debut LP, Teaser, in the house, they’re pretty lame. Bolin was an unsung hero of the six-string, a world-class talent with deadly phrasing, capable of flights of jazz fusion and playing in Deep Purple. “Marching Powder” is a most-righteous instrumental from Bolin’s 1975 solo album, mixing rock fury, jazz, Latin idioms and funk that is still pretty damn life-affirming 30-plus years after the fact. Bolin died tragically in 1976 and is remanded to the history books, but if the fearless men of the Mars Volta covered this track, the gesture would go far in directing younger players toward the late guitarist’s immense gifts. (Oh, and if you’re a drummer, pay attention to Narada Michael Walden, whose performance here is so furious and precise, he makes me tear up in joy every time I play this.) In the typical Volta style of stretching things out for maximum discovery, I figured a 15-minute live version of the track would fit nicely on a 12-inch single. Tommy, I miss you. Omar: Get going. (PS. Check out the posthumous Bolin collection Whips And Roses on SPV.)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Don’t Get Your Bells In A Bobtail
The contemporary Christmas album to rival that sleepy Very Special Christmas series. My double-disc collection of holiday songs includes Jaguar Love’s take on “Sleigh Ride,” Cursive covering Big Star’s “Jesus Christ,” Crocodiles stepping up for Suicide’s “Hey Lord,” Every Time I Die offering a grinding original called “Holiday Death Toll” (admit it, that totally sounds like an ETID track, doesn’t it?), Anthony Green unplugging for Prince’s “Another Lonely Christmas” and Brand New delivering a distorted version of “Carol Of The Bells.” The entire second disc is Coheed And Cambria’s interpretation of “The Twelve Days Of Christmas,” clocking in at 72 minutes as each “day” runs six minutes and has several chapter titles. (Don’t front, Claudio: You know I’m right.)