Visions of War - Olho de Gato split LP (Angry Records, 2002)
When h-bomb and me come home drunk from a bar we like to play our old crustie favorites really loud (our favorite: ENT/Chaos UK split). This one could be one of the records we’d play, at least the Visions of War side: raging ENT-like noise from Belgium. I liked Olho de Gato (RIP) better live than on record so I’d like to focus this post on Visions of War. I added the Olho de Gato-songs as an mp3 for those interested.
My scanner is being an asshole so I stole the image of the sleeve off the Angry Records website.
Last week I ripped the great “punk live in Brouwershoeck” LP again on request. (thanks for the cd Tijn!)It made me spin the Softies singles again this week. The ‘Suicide pilot’ single is awesome. I love playing it as loud as possible, both sides rock so hard they make my ears bleed. The songs on the “punk live in Brouwershoeck” LP are the same songs that are on the other Softies’ single. They did a full lenght, but it does not rock as hard as this single. By far.
Nice to knows: Frank(enstein) plays bass on the “Suicide pilot” single. He played on more early Dutch classics like Helmettes and later Speedtwins. The songs with Captain were produced by Jan Rietman, who played piano in Arnhem rockabilly band ‘Long Tall Ernie and the Shakers’ and became somekind of famous in Holland as a pianoplayer, songwriter and TV host.
Here’s both singles and the best song of their LP. Play at maximum volume!
I had these lying around for a while. They are from Holland and so they have my interest, but there’s tons of other records that are some much cooler. Tonight though I was watching this items on traffic jams, and it slipped my mind I could use that as a little bridge…
I have no clue about Hansje what so ever, but it seems pretty clear this is big labels trying to make a little money out of the punk wave. Introduce a Dutch ‘Blondie’ and milk that cow…the milk must have tasted sour, because I don’t think they came to milk a full lenght. Nevertheless you can hear they did a little homework and that paid off.
Where the first single seems to be heavily leaning on Plastic Bertrand, the second single sounds more inspired by Blondie. It makes both a-sides pretty catchy actually. The b-sides are simply crap. I wonder what the producers + management had in mind with those songs…If anyone has any info, I am interested as always!
12-12-08 update: Turns out ‘Hansje Ravesteijn’ was a 70’s photomodel with many ambitions. Besides a musician, she was a dancer and painter. She entered a “Blondie look-a-like contest” and won. The winning price was a meet and greet with Blondie in NYC. After she returned a record contract followed. Much more info on her, like a fan page, is found here. Sweet. Dutchies might wanna read this most interesting article, too.
As promised in the previous post: “Sountracks zum Untergang II”. Also this records has a history of censorship. This time it concerns the band Böhse Onkelz, who’s name is taken of the sleeve after the 1st press. This most probably has to do with the political progress of the band. But since it’s ultra punk to slag off hippies and religion, I understand the songs kept on the record. Anyway, here’s the rips of the 1st and uncensored release…not that it really matters in this case.
Stand outs are: Marionetz (Ich Bin Ein T-Shirt), Canalterror (Sie Marschieren Wieder), Neurotic Arseholes (Technischer Fortschritt). A total destroyer in my book is Notdurft - Süße Heimat, my favourite song on this record.
Although I have a few old Dutch records waiting te be posted, I felt more like doing something German this week. In fact I will post both “Soundtracks zum Untergang 1 + 2″. Two great compilations with a story of censorship. In autumn ‘81 this record was confiscated in several recordshops by the German authorities. Reason were two songs on the record (”Helden” from Middle Class Fantasies + Slime song “Polizei SA/SS”), that were offending (slander) the German State and it’s symbols. I really wonder what kind of paranoia was going on in Germany those days. Of course radical messages can be considered a threat to democracy, but I never heard of Dutch records being censored, for example…It must have something to do with their , let’s say, “cultural” heritage.
The 2nd press of the record has certain parts of both songs being “bleeped” out. Also the repress has “censored” printed in the upper left corner. Of course this has only contributed to the populairity of the compilationd and the bands. In case of Slime this and their later work resulted in their houses being searched and almost being treated like terrorists.
This is the first release of Berlin’s ‘Aggressive Rockproduktionen’, who followed with a number of great releases from German bands like Slime, Canalterror, Toxoplasma, Daily Terror and so on. Besides have some of the bigger German punkbands under their belt, AGR also did a number of releases with American bands.
All songs freshly ripped from the uncensored 1st press. My scanner had serious issues, and quit after scanning the inlay. I nicked the front and back cover from Vinylpunx.de. To me stand outs on this record are Offensive Herbst ‘87 (Selbstmord), Aheads (Minuteman), ZK (Immer wieder besetzt) and Razors (I Hate).
Punishment of Luxury - secrets/brainbomb (1979, united artists UP36537)
When we were going for a year we had the great idea of posting the “punx not dread” LP versus all the original songs/singles. Since we are already in our third year, I figured it is about time to post one of my favourites from that record. Both the original as the cover version (Chaos UK) of the song ‘brainbomb’ are simply great. Great to find out that Niels already did great writing about Punisment of Luxury, which saves me time, wink wink. More reading can be done here and here. More Punilux on KBD, who just posted them today as well!
I found the Insted Proud youth… CD not too long ago and that was the reason to post their LP I own. Cool fast positive SxE from California, check out the band photo on the back cover… funny shit. Apparently they did some reunion shows three years ago and it goes without saying that I only found out about those today, looking for some info for this post. Their Myspace has a link to a video of one of those shows, see below.
Upright Citizens - Facts and Views EP (Skvaller recs, profit 004)
Not much to add nor explain about these Bochumer punks. We already posted some of their records here and here. This one holds songs written between ‘82 and ‘84, couple of them re-recorded for this release. Seems that the song ’a gift to Europe’ was supposed to be on the record at first, since the German translation of the lyrics is (still?) on the lyric sheet.
On request I can post the Kiss me now 12″ as well, which is, despite it’s title, not a bad record at all. Upright Citizens, I love them!
Saturday night quicky: Slumgang were a bunch of nutty Nots I have met in Holland years back, when they were playing here quite often with Groningen based band “Fermented”. Very hardcore partying, specially in a big squatted army base in Arnhem. Good times, for what I remember, haha.
This single showed up from under the dust a few weeks ago, and I have been playing it regularly since. Not much i can tell you about these guys, nor what they are doing now. Scanning the sleeve showed the record is not mine, but at least it stayed in the family
I have not been posting a lot lately. I got caught up in some other things. Yesterday I went through my singles and found a lot of good stuff I want to share. Finally I found time and rest to rip a number of records etc. I decided to make it up and do three singles in one post, by the great band District from Bochum, Germany.
District started somewhere around ‘95. At least that is the first time I heard of them. A mix of young and old punks (check the inlay of the 1st single for details) from Bochum playing pretty fast punk, a la Exploited, but with a hint to slower more melodic punkrock. I have loved that single from the start, even if the band would have sucked I would have loved it for the cover.
They have come a long way since that first single. And i mean music wise. You can clearly hear that on these three singles they did. From the rough punk (police states order) towards poppy punk (babies number). listeing through these singles really showes a certain line of development in a musical direction. I dig that a lot.
Besides these singles they did a great cd (’my dad’s a punk’ on DirtyFaces), that holds the songs on the 1st and 2nd single, plus demo recordings. On top of that they did a split Lp with a band called “Bad News”, from the same area. They split up and came back as 2ndDistrict, after members being in the Revolvers. They recently did an LP called “don’t mess with the hard punx”. Although critics are very positive about this record, I cannot get into it. Too bad, because I love the single that was taken of the album, “my babies number”. It sticks in your head like glue.
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