Touch and Go Records Goes Bye-Bye

Chicago indie record label Touch and Go will be closing its business after nearly 30 years. For those of you who don't know, this is pretty sad since they are responsible for bringing the world music by great bands like Girls Against Boys, Jesus Lizard, Big Black, Slint and Butthole Surfers from the good ol' days, and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists (who jumped from Bay Area punk label Lookout! Records when they were about to fold in 2006 to the label) from today. They will cease releasing new albums and concentrate on managing the back catalog solely. You can read the official statement by Touch and Go label head Corey Rusk over at Time Out Chicago.

I was and still am a big fan of defunct Touch and Go band Girls Against Boys, or GVSB, in popular parlance. Here is audio and video from their Touch and Go records "Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby" (1993), "Cruise Yourself" (1994), and "House of GVSB" (1996), respectively. Enjoy!







I miss these guys. I danced with GVSB's lead singer Scott McCloud in a small club in NYC once. I know, hawt.

I Can't Believe You Don't Own This F%#kin' Record - Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary

SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE - DIARY (1994)

It's weird to think that Weezer's Blue Album (or more technically, "Weezer") came out the same year as Sunny Day Real Estate's debut album "Diary," which was released on the famous and very 90's indie-rock music label Sub Pop, out of Seattle, WA. What's funny is that you hear the name "Weezer" spoken in the same breath as the word "emo" far more these days than Sunny Day Real Estate, though theirs is the band (along with Rites of Spring) that I think of when I think of what could possibly constitute emo.

I listened to Diary far more than was healthy back then. Certain scenester friends of mine and I agreed that although the songs tended to be somewhat same-y after a while, there was something we really loved about SDRE's sound. First off, lead singer Jeremy Enigk's voice belongs in its own very special place in heaven once he goes. His vocals had what we have now come to understand as a dreamy yet ragged Thom Yorke style quality, contributing to the 'emo' tag that the band labored under. The fevered guitars and hardcore pounding of the drums served as a effective contrast to the open wound quality of the vocals, a mode that would come to influence bands like Thursday, Killswitch Engage and Poison the Well.

Though every tune is worth a listen on Diary, my personal babies were the first two songs, "Seven" and "In Circles." I have them here for you to enjoy:



Sunny Day Real Estate - "Seven" - Diary (1994)



Sunny Day Real Estate - "In Circles" - Diary (1994)

I'm just finding out that SDRE performed "Seven" live on "The Jon Stewart Show" eons ago. This recording is poor quality, but please enjoy:



And if you're young and can't remember this band or "The Jon Stewart Show," and you're hooked, please click here to see them perform the song live on MTV's "120 Minutes," another show that you were too young to stay up to watch.

Soundtrack of Your Life: Liz Phair - "Stratford-On-Guy"

While we're on the subject, we can celebrate the 15th anniversary reissue of Liz Phair's 1993 debut album Exile in Guyville, which is available in stores and on iTunes now. This record is famously an answer record to The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street (1972), and probably more infamously, one that managed to both excite and discomfort people with its frankly sexual (and gender-flipped) lyrics and flat, dispassionate vocals by Phair. I think many men felt somewhat castrated by her, but figured if anyone had to do the castrating, why not a hot chick like Liz Phair? Click here to watch a video (produced by Liz herself) of famous 90's relics fondly recalling Exile in Guyville.

My favorite song off of this album is not one the more notorious songs like "Flower" or "F**k and Run" (this is a family blog) but one of the last songs on the second side of the tape, "Stratford-on-Guy." I always enjoyed the much darker atmosphere created on this song than on the other songs on Exile. Her vocals seem strongest on this track, and the momentum is built up slowly but steadily during the verse, erupting into scathing emotion in the chorus. The accompanying video for Stratford-on-Guy also effectively plugs into the night driving quality that this song holds for me.



Her lyrics were good. Check it out:

I was flying into Chicago at night
Watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke
The sun was setting to the left of the plane
And the cabin was filled with an unearthly glow
In 27-D I was behind the wing
Watching landscape roll out
Like credits on a screen
The earth looked like it was lit from within
Like a poorly assembled electrical ball as we moved
Out of the farmlands into the grid
The plan of the city was all that you saw
And all of these people sitting totally still
As the ground raced beneath them thirty thousand feet down

It took an hour, maybe a day
But once I really listened, the noise
Just went away

Liz Phair - "Stratford-on-Guy" (1993)

Upcoming Show: My Bloody Valentine - Santa Monica Civic Center, Oct. 1-2

Just popping in to let you know that the infamous My Bloody Valentine are finishing up what amounts to their comeback tour at the Santa Monica Civic Center in CA this Wednesday, October 1, and Thursday, October, 2. I will be at the Wednesday show and am super excited about this. I love the earsplitting and beautiful feedback-laden guitar sound of My Bloody Valentine. They are apparently listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for loudest concert.

This band has been M.I.A. since their indie-rock classic album, Loveless (1991). Here is the excellent "Only Shallow" from that record: