Nation Of Ulysses - A Kid Who Tells On Another Kid Is A Dead Kid!

Back again, bringing you bangers like a benevolent butcher. Alliterate now! Today's tasty morsel is the Nation Of Ulysses with the playground law smash A Kid Who Tells On Another Kid Is A Dead Kid, another mixtape favourite from back in the day, and even before I heard the track I knew from the title it was probably going to be good, and lo and behold I was right, as always! It's scratchy american punk with bratty shouting in a K Records vain, and remains my favourite track of theirs ever, a lovely bassline and feedbacking guitar going into a smash up your bedroom style guitar fuzz with a rocking chorus, if you don't love this then this guy will probably not like you, and that's not cool.



Common sense. Simple, common sense.


The Nation of Ulysses was an autonomous state of the Americas between 1988 and 1992, presided over by Mikhael Gorbachev's illegitimate brother Andy Gorbachev, and this track was the national anthem. President Andy passed a decree that whenever it was played at official occasions any visiting dignitaries had to form a circle pit and do spinning roundhouse kicks on pain of death. The execution of a delegation from Luxembourg during a state dinner led to the Nation disbanding and fleeing to Uruguay where they remain, fugitives from the law. This is lifted from their wikipedia article which is here:

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

the mp3 is here:

Nation of Ulysses - A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid.mp3

Urusei Yatsura - Kewpies Like Watermelon

Hello again!

We got trafficshaped due to stupid Australian internet loserness and I couldn't update but now I'm back like the return of the mack, bringing you the freshest and most up-to-date and relevant music hits, fresh from 1996. Here for your delectation are the super hip Dubstep Nu-Metal Thamesbeat stylings of Urusei Yatsura, with Kewpies Like Watermelon, a track I liked very much yesterday when it came out. Two point oh. Featuring silent contributions from Florence's Machine, and Dizzy Raasclaat, it's grimey as anything, and Justin Bieber's rap about Twilight is frankly astonishing.

OK, I'm lying, it's clearly indie guitar rock from the ancient past but it's still ace and if you're here reading this then the chances are you will find it to your taste. Urusei Yatsura were a small band from Glasgow who made Dinosaur Jr influenced indiepop songs, and were part of the so called "Glitter Underground" which basically meant kids who liked to write fanzines were into them and lots of their fans wore fake fur, a fact alluded to on the cryptically titled track "Fake Fur" which is worth your time to hunt down if you're that way inclined. They had three albums, this track is from the first, the second is also great, the third one not so much.


Urusei Yatsura. In Glasgow. Yesterday.

Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urusei_Yatsura_%28band%29

Download the track:

Urusei Yatsura - Kewpies Like Watermelon.mp3

bette davis and the balconettes - shopping on the internet

Well, well, well, here we are again, it's almost like i'm taking this blogging thing seriously. Almost.

For your delectation today we have Shopping on the Internet by Bette Davis and the Balconettes, which was the B-side to their single Paul Power T-Shirt. I always preferred this to the A-side, it sounds slightly slower than I remember it "back in the day" but that's something I've noticed with a lot of things recently so I'll let it slip, it's still a banger. I always connect this song in my head with fanzines, cut and paste, and letters that were full of glitter when you opened them meaning people would complain of glitter in the carpet and such, and when you read the letters they would implore you to listen to the latest signings on Slampt, or ask you about whether you thought Disco Pistol were fake or real and other such pressing matters. Nowadays most of the letters I receive are from companies that are demanding I pay them money, and without exception, all of them are utterly devoid of glitter or kero kero keroppi stickers which is, to my mind, a bit of a shame. As an aside, I maintain that this is the reason I, also without exception, flatly refuse to pay these people. Anyway, back to the song/band/thing I am supposed to be writing about.
This is a song about Shopping on the Internet, the very same internet that you are reading this on, but you have to remember that in the late 90s when this came out, the internet was a casual construction of tincans and string, held together with dogeared nudey pics that had been clipped out of the daily sport, so the idea of doing your shopping on it was pretty radical, as opposed to now when I'm quite sure that pop starlets like Justin Bieber probably shop exclusively on the internet and writing a song about it would seem slightly pointless. Whether or not he would find "rude assistants or pubic lice in the panties he tried on" were he to try shopping in real life remains to be known, but it's a possibility, and when Usher is schooling you in the ways of the world you probably try and avoid such things, in much the same style that Bette Davis and her Balconettes describe in this song. I feel it's getting tangential again.


This is what the internet looked like in 1997. Not like it is now.

Bette Davis and the Balconettes were mancunians, they shout about blacknosed scousers stealing their mountain bikes, they were on slampt, they were fanzine darlings and seemingly not at all bothered with making the charts, true to the "punka, punku" ethics of slampt. they released five singles or something, you should really check out their song Shergar as well, I might upload it here at some point if I get bored, but they are heartily recommended for fans of shouty riot grrrl tinged stuff like Huggy Bear et al, I love them, you should too. Initialise download now...

bette davis - shopping_on_the_internet.mp3

abort/retry/fail?

j.

bennet - mum's gone to iceland

Hello reader(s?),

Here we have another new old delight for your ears, some jingle jangle jewellery indie pop from back in the day by everyones' favourite top 40 botherers, Bennet! This was another of the purchases I made in my halcyon summer holidays in Hove circa 1932, this one from the now defunct Virgin Megastore, and it's a cracker. The sleeve artwork was a bit shoddy, but clearly an attempt to move from playing Splatch in Guildford every month or two, and start playing the bigtime, a move which sadly failed apart from this tune, and what a tune it is, following the indie pop formula of the time to the letter:

JINGLE + JANGLE x CYNICISM (LYRICAL CONTENT) = WINN!


This is the last remaining picture of Bennet, taken during their illadvised advertising campaign ft. Kerry Katona. Neither the band, Kerry Katona, or Iceland came out of this looking good and the photos were subsequently destroyed.

I seem to remember that this hit something like 39 in the hit parade, which at the time was actually a parade, not like the internet digistream it has since become, and I also remember watching Bennet gleefully cheering as the parade marched through our village on Top of the Pops night. I stood and saluted them with pride.

Bennet were a three or fourpiece band from Reading who formed in 1874, they wore finely tailored double vented three button suits from Hawkes of Savile Row, and their favourite drink was Advocaat which they would drink either on the rocks, or with lemonade to create a cocktail known as the "Bennetball" which later came to be very on trend for a three week period over the summer of 1992.

Here is their song:

bennet - mum\'s gone to iceland.mp3

rude club - men in suits

This one is a slow builder, but I'm surprised I didn't open the blog with it seeing as at the time this was one of my favourite things ever. I bought this from a townie girl at school on CD bizarrely enough, I had a copy of Locust by the same band which was alright, and she had bought this "by mistake" appparently, so for two days lunch money it ended up being mine, and in an unrelated incident she got pregnant and dropped out of school. Rude Club were part of the toilet circuit collective of Camden indie bands of the mid to late nineties, and it definitely sounds very much of its time with squawly guitars and slightly grating female shouty vocals, but they were definitely bigger riffers than some of your Fluffys and Tampasms, and the initial roar of guitar that follows the playground noise sampling, slightly overlong intro is HAMAZING. Trust me.


Normally this would be a picture of the band or the single artwork or something but google yields nothing and I don't have a scanner. These are just men in suits.

Anyway, the lyrics hint at seediness which was essentially a pre-requisite for girl fronted shouty indie bands at the time, lots of talk of money changing hands for favours etc, the guitars are loud and this song is generally good fun to smash your bedroom up to, download this now and set to doing that perhaps? I can't find much detail about them on the interweb which is unusual but they only had a few singles on Parkway Records so I guess maybe that's something to do with it. I think they were a London band although there's a myspace which claims to be run from Manchester but it's not actually the band's page so who knows. They made a great racket, from 1995 through to 1999, and then due to an argument between the two founding members and their bassist the singer decided she had had enough of the music business and set up a small minibus company offering lease and hire arrangements at reasonable prices. The drummer now works in Tesco in Camden and he once approached Chris Gentry for an autograph in 2003 causing both of them great embarrasment. The bassist is a successful middlemanager at KPMG.

rude club - men in suits.mp3

liz phair - batmobile

i first received this track on a mixtape back in the long distant primordial times in which mixtapes were actually cassettes instead of CDs. there were two tapes and each contained (amongst others obviously) one liz phair tune; this one, and animal girl. both are great tracks, but i have chosen this one to be my latest update, although as i type this i'm listening to animal girl and questioning my choice. anyway, allow it. batmobile is an amazing tune, almost comical (excuse the pun) lyrics, delivered with solemnity, making a great tune to sit and stare out of the window to in some suburban hole wishing you were anywhere but there. enjoy the tune. don't enjoy it, it's entirely up to you. no-one reads this anyway. knock yrselves out.

Liz Phair - Batmobile.mp3



here is the bit where i talk about the artist. liz phair was born in norwich and attended a variety of primary schools before moving to america where she received an honourary degree in philosophy. she released an album entitled juvenilia which the track i've just blogged came from, it's great, rumour has it she gave the demo tape to some record company guy in a bar, he was besotted with it and the album was released. after that she decided that it might be a good idea to write some big pop tunes and did, they were also not too bad. she then decided that she wanted to look like she does in the picture above which wasn't a great move and wrote several songs about wanting to molest young boys which didn't go so well. she was then ripped off by taylor swift in a savage way, who repackaged her stuff with a young girl singing rather than an older woman, and taylor swift went on to international success. juvenilia is the only good thing to really come of any of it. facts not opinions.

bye.

camera casanovas - breakfast and tea

this song is all of a minute long, but beautiful in its twee simplicity. a swedish band about whom i know not a great deal in all honesty, but i have a few tracks of theirs, and this is definitely the one to hear. the remix by a chap called benni, not so much. but we'll skate over that, this is twee indie pop at its tweeest, it's an ode to the delights of the titular breakfast and tea, completely resplendent in its cup and saucer, teaspoon and slurp samples. i defy you not to feel slightly charmed by this song. i bloody well defy you.




camera casanovas! - breakfast and tea.mp3