Opening this week with two reviews of what you’ll be getting in the soon-to-be-launched Heathen Disco sidecar, which I’m calling Purple Vu. This will be a home for coverage of old music reissued and otherwise, a repository of my writing from years and publications past, and crate-digging coverage from my sporadic jaunts around and under the bins. More on this really soon, including a subscribe link (as soon as I can sort it out). The plan is to give active Heathen Disco subscribers a discount when you get both … that’s the plan, at least. Sit tight and I’ll deliver unto you a weekly tranche of less-than-recent, and otherwise just plain forgotten music, and the world that amassed around it.

Keep sending it in! Do not hesitate to contact [email protected] / PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625. Seriously in a bit it’s gonna be way harder for me to find the time to find you. Pass this along to anyone who’ll look at it.

LAUGHING HYENAS That Girl: Live Recordings 1986-1994 2xLP (Third Man)

Something I’ve never heard: “you know, the Laughing Hyenas could’ve been better on stage.” I can’t attest; I was forced to miss my last and only two chances to see them in 1993 and 1994, times I regret being my own age and cusping out of most of the bands I idolized when I was first plugging into what was music versus what was scripture. It’s why I’m still fascinated with the era covered on this monstrous collection – you can only fantasize about what you didn’t get to see, you can only wonder what would’ve been in front of you, without embarrassing ‘80s gated production, or worse still the sounds that a studio could never fully replicate. I’ll never understand what it was like to see Nice Strong Arm live, and I’m told it was nothing like the records (and they had Brannon’s help on a song, too). Such is life.

The Laughing Hyenas had the legacy and landlock of the Stooges as hindsight, and efforts of groups like The Birthday Party trying to spin oily gold out of the past, but nobody ever matched this level of intensity, and to this date no one else has done it so completely. (Tad had moments around ‘89-‘90 where they got up there, but slipped). I’m not sure how you could play after a band like this, that could shift into whatever gear needed to up their ferocity, and that they never topped it out, always with ceiling to go harder. Any iteration of their rhythm section, particularly the prime era with Kevin Strickland and the late Jim Kimball, could easily stir the pot and ratchet up where needed, and Larissa Strickland (also sadly gone) ripped intensely simple leads that opened up primal curtains of noise made to cause hurt. All of this framed John Brannon’s acid howl and thousand yard stare, acting as a force multiplier to everything behind him. How do you go to work or school the next day when someone did this in front of you the night before? The tapes that caught these performances can barely hold onto what was put on them; how could a person, let alone those who went out and did this every night for weeks on end?

I acknowledge that it’s harder than ever for people in their 50s or 60s to impart upon the divide to younger generations that this was what we used to get when we went out, and it makes me wonder about what’s left of the market for Third Man’s extensive Hyenas retrospective, if it all came too late. Maybe this time’s the key. Prove to me that this doesn’t affect you, even terrify you, in ways that block the path of the real insanity around us every day. Use it as insulation, maybe a guide for how to scream back.

HERE Swirl LP (Stoned to Death)

First-time reissue of this Czech group’s heavy 1993 debut, a grimy and determined collision of the most violent US and UK shoegaze, with pure-as-driven-snow vocals recalling Velocity Girl’s Sarah Shannon if she stood in back and let the band roar in front of her. Lots of moves you’ll recognize here, like Kevin Shields’ whammy bar, and some you’ll appreciate now, like the dramatic flourishes instilled in these nine songs, like they took Goth and pulled it inside out. There’s a zine included outlining the band’s history and position in the annals of Czech shoegaze, but you ain’t readin’ all that now – just listen, and think about how this band appears to be giving it everything in their power to push beyond the cold walls of placement and spill their stain on the international stage. Thinking of all the exchange students where were over there in the right place and time taking this tape home and wearing it out makes me smile, and once more proves that the more you look into the past, the more you’ll find.

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