Music: The Cherry Blossoms “Live in Amsterdam” LP

Well ya know The Cherry Blossoms are after all maybe the best band in Nashville, and they're certainly the most authentic, (whatever that means...) Like a scoop of ice cream on the porch of your grandmother's naïve wisdom, minus the latent racism, CBs kind of ramble on toward some nonexistent rustic ideal. It seems real enough that you assume the whole “Past” is just like it. Though it probably never was?

To a few older dudes it was, man. You've got your Holy Modal Rounders and maybe Yo Ho Wah or whatever. To be honest this is more enjoyable. For one thing CBs are designed for, like ideal live, which this record is. But the recording is spruce: nicely separated stereo image and clean. The acoustic guits and kazoos and everything are real crisp, and the drums sound great.

Chris Davis's drums are really crucial to any Cherry Blossoms jam, dude's playing is extremely disheveled, but realllly profound, which is about what conversing with him is like. Davis is adept at playing this kind of “pseudo-free” style, all off-kilter, loosey-goosey, but will chug-along too. “Bean Bag,” which closes out the record is a great example of The Cherry Blossoms' general M.O. of spacey traditionalism: the meat of it is a meandering chuga-chug beat, like Neu meets Graham Parsons or like how N.R.P.S. might sound, maybe they do? (It's been a while, ya know?)

If you're familiar with the CBs than you get that John Allingham's kind of the glue of the thing, or whatever, but Peggy Snow is the absolute show-stopping delight. Her quavering vibrato and goofball romanticism and general enthusiasm, (and kazoo,) are the focal point here, and elsewhere they shan't be. One can definitely appreciate this incarnation of the band, that finds CBs rolling as a full quintet. That Chuck dude who works at Bongo on righteously “out of it” bass and especially Taylor Martin's vocal harmonies and especially her angelic counterpoint on “Lay the Cloud Thin.”

I'm pretty sure a couple of these songs can be found on The Cherry Blossoms' equally compelling studio LP, but I'm too lazy to cross reference which ones right now. If you're familiar with the CBs and dig them, than you'll dig this record. Familiar with them and don't dig, then leave it alone, but if you're intrigued by the band, yet unfamiliar, this one should make for a decent introduction, on par with their OOP self-titled album. A nice shrink-wrapped package from Chicago label, Hairy Spider Legs. Recommended!

Music: Leather Nightmare 12” EP

I think this is the Leather Nightmare we were supposed to be hearing all along, and really the distinguishing features are mostly in the (impeccable) visual design, (matte black generic sleeve with printed stickers, black inner sleeve,) but judging also by frothy jokiness and real-life applicability, than this is the one you want too man.

I still like to assume LN are a cruel joke, the laughing, gaping asshole of Nashville's Genre-Rock scene du jour, delivered with a stoney-faced irony so impenetrable it might be real, maybe, the cutting and sardonic other genre... Better Bauhaus than Black Flag, tbh. Better Swans than sycophantic JTB-sympatico swill.

The riffs--and this is riff rock at its purest--are usually pretty good, memorable even. The lyrics are "relatable" too: “I gotta fuckin' cum,” like, I can relate to that, ya know. Elsewhere lead singer, Reid Barger sings about trying to get high w/o any weed, like when you scrape out all the resin from your bowl. These are real issues one wishes more artists would tackle.

Yeah man, Leather Nightmare were good. Supposedly they hit a self-imposed high water mark and called it quits before they could ever produce a real, all the way there LP. Maybe it's for the best. Maybe not? Still, I wouldn't want to get caught in The Rapture w/o owning this here 12” EP.

Black Jacket, Black Sleeve, Def. Recommended!

Music: Terror'ish / Textbook Punk split tape

God knows I've blathered on about Rob Bekham's Terror'ish project on this blog before, "at length"... and with no disrespect to those previous posts, this shit here, this is the best Terror'ich music I've ever heard.

Shit comes strobing out of the gate, and it sounds like your computer's internal sequences eating themselves but “beatwise.” Rhythmic. Add MIDI-fucked piano, voice, the thing is becoming a garbled mess of digital horror-show pop, like a haunted cabaret, man, like WW2 nightmare, Gravity's Rainbow, The Video Game. The tape goes on and on, industrio-pop-noise future. It is very long, and it goes a lil' soft by the end, tbh.

Textbook Punk's side is all goofy loops, sometimes compelling and sometimes not. I know this dude very well, like let's just say that I am this dude, and so even confessing that “this is not my best shit,” betrays insider confidence. Let's just say that “this is some shit I did.”

Dubbed onto recycled (insane paranoid religious re-use) tapes, that have a lil' “No Heresy” logo right on them. (Email textbookpunk @ gmail for availablitliyoiulit.) Very Very Very Highly Recommended!

Music: Piss Bath tape

Here we have a fairly long (45-60 minute?) cassette from Murfreesboro's "venerated" Piss Bath, whom I must confess to never having seen live. That's on me, but I just don't really... eh whatever. Maybe I'm old or maybe... ehhh.

So: to me this tape's tracks, of which, for all intents and purposes, there are infinitely many, all sound about alike. Most of them pretty much consist of a heavy-handed, down-stroked “riff,” (on bass and guitar,) and shouted (female) vocals.

Shit, I could really enjoy this at a show for sure, and yeah I'd probably feel annoyed after like 15 minutes, but ya know, I feel confidant these guys have probably never played for longer than that, and good on 'em. Feel like they know what they're doing.

I drove around with this thing in my car's tape deck for the better part of a week and honestly couldn't tell you if “Side A Repeats,” or if it's all different songs or what, but I like it, I mean it is what it is and I figured I knew what it was when I got it and it, uh, lived up to whatever I thought it would be. The recording quality changes a few times: different "sessions," I guess, but it's all pretty grimy "lo-fi," obviously.

Generic cassette but the Norelco case is yellow (piss) tinted and the art is pretty funny, I guess... J-card doesn't fit into the case properly, so I'll detract a few points for that.  Recommended anyhow ...