Polyrock Radio Special
I first discovered Polyrock at Lost Bands Of The New Wave Era (an amazing blog) and saw them again later at another blog (I think Scenestars). The definition of an unjustly forgotten band, Polyrock was an early 80s post-punk/synth band that had the fortune of being produced by Philip Glass. Many people call them Philip Glass’ answer to The Talking Heads, but I never knew The Talking Heads were a question to anyone, let alone Philip Glass! Besides, it’s not like they didn’t exist before he joined up.

All of Polyrock’s albums are out of print and have never been released on CD. That’s a damn shame, because their debut is amazing and their follow-up ain’t half bad either. Neither of them seemed to sell though. At least RCA, their label, seemed to have tried. I’ve seen several magazines from the time period with full-page Polyrock ads, and they also released this promotional radio special featuring several songs by the band, as well as interviews with Philip Glass and his co-producer. I’ve never even heard of this before and have no idea as to how rare this is. Anyone with an interest in the band, radio programs, or Philip Glass should really check this one out.

Tracklist (excluding interviews and station breaks)
Green For Go
Shut Your Face
#7
Romantic Me
Go West
Sound Alarm
No Love Lost
Your Dragging Feet (Interview is in the middle)
Body Me
This Song
Bucket Rider

New turntable. No more slightly faster songs. Damn my obsessive compulsive tendencies and my undying need to please everyone all the time.

The Strokes
Last Night (Original Version)
Modern Age (Original Version)
Modern Girls And Old Fashioned Men (w/ Regina Spector)
Wow, a blog posting about The Strokes! How 2001 of me! Well, the single was sitting in a pile of unrecorded 45s and I thought ‘what the Hell.’ The first two tracks were taken off of their independently released single. These versions are different than the ones that appeared on their debut album. ‘Modern Girls And Old Fashioned Men’ is a B-side to ‘Reptilia’ and features backing vocals by the lovely Soviet goddess Regina Spector, someone who’ll I’ll probably revisit on this blog pretty soon.

Moby
Whip It (Heavy Metal Version)
Remember when Moby went all metal on our asses? Why the fuck did he do that? I mean, sure his cover of ‘That’s When I Reach For My Revolver’ was alright, but did the world really need Animal Rights? One good thing that came from it was this B-side though, an awesomely odd cover of Devo’s ‘Whip It.’ The first time I heard this I thought the record was playing at the wrong speed.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Let Me Know (Demo)
From the picture disc single of ‘Gold Lion’. I wasn’t a big fan of their second release, maybe I should give it a second chance.

Nirvana
Blew (Live)
Stain (Live)
Been A Son (Live)
I’m not going to wax poetic on the importance of Nirvana, if you don’t know…well, you probably know, so what’s the point? Anyways, these are off a shitty looking bootleg EP called Alive II that I scored from Mad Hatter a few years ago. It was recorded on April 4th, 1990 at The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, Michigan (which is a great place to see a show). I’m looking forward to the new DVD release of Live! Tonight! Sold Out! since I never got to see the band live during their all too short existence. Don’t complain about the quality of these – they are bootlegs after all.

Anti-Flag
What Do You Think About Western Civilization (Demo Version)
Die For The Government (Live)
Before Anti-Flag the biggest band to come out of Pittsburgh was Wild Cherry. That’s quite a musical legacy my town has. In case your wondering, the next big act to come out of Pittsburgh will be Grand Buffet. Anyways, these two tracks by the horribly talented but utterly humorless anti-everything punk rockers come from the ‘Emirge’ single.

I pissed off at least one person with yesterday’s rant, which was kind of the goal I guess. Several people (including Mr. Anonymous in my comments) told me that name-calling doesn’t make a difference. And that’s probably true. Petitions, organized protests, non-violent resistance and civil disobedience are much more effective. If you are truly upset with something, get involved and fight to change it. That being said…name-calling is much more fun and far easier to do in my room at 3 o’clock in the morning! I do more constructive things with my negative energy, believe me, but sometimes it just feels good to cuss someone out.

Anyways, I have more Erasure for you! These tracks are off of the Chains Of Love and Oh L’ Amour 12” singles, respectively. If you don’t feel like downloading four different versions of ‘Chains Of Love’ I recommend ‘The Unfettered Mix’ the most – although if you’re going by which one has the best name, then you can’t go wrong with ‘Truly In Love With The Marks Bros. Mix.’ No matter what, you have to download their groovy cover of ‘The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly’ a song that for some strange reason I like to listen to while playing Rockstar’s Table Tennis game for the Xbox360.

Erasure
Chains Of Love (The Unfettered Mix)
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Chains Of Love (The Foghorn Mix)
Chains Of Love (Truly In Love With The Marks Bros. Mix)
Don’t Surprise (Country Joe Mix)
Chains Of Love (Fetter Dub Dub)
Oh L’Amour (The Funky Sisters Remix)
Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie! (12” Mix)
March On Down The Line

Neil Young – Trans
And now for something…surprisingly similar. I posted two tracks of this oddity before, but you sick bastards wanted more. So here you go – the complete Trans, AKA Neil Young’s electronic album. Released in 1982, this album quickly tumbled into obscurity and has never been heard from again. The story behind it is pretty interesting though, supposedly, Young discovered that his Autistic son responded better to him when he spoke through a vocoder, so he recorded several songs that way (never mind that no one else could understand a word he said). I suspect that Young also did this in yet another one of his attempts to not “burn out or fade away.” Not every song on Trans has vocoder effects on it, and even the ones that do are still unmistakably Neil Young songs. Stand-outs include ‘Sample & Hold’ and the epic ‘Like An Inca.’ It may not be the man’s strongest album, but it is FAR from his weakest, and it’s a damn shame its never been re-released on CD in America.

I must mention that these files aren’t of the greatest quality. The copy of Trans I have is a severely used one I found at a Record Exchange for about four bucks. I fixed the skips and scratches, but the fidelity still leaves a lot to be desired. I’m looking for a better copy. (And don’t recommended the import CD, some the songs were remixed and do not sound the same.)

Erasure – one of the gayest bands on the face of the Earth. I don’t mean that in the ‘God, that’s so GAY’ way, but in the literal ‘this is the musical equivalent of two gay men making out at a Judy Garland film festival’ kind of way. I love them though, and if you can’t be secure enough in your sexuality to shake your ass to perfect dance tunes like ‘Sometimes’ and ‘Chains Of Love’ then you have some serious issues to work out.

POLITICAL RANT WARNING. IF YOU ARE CONSERVATIVE, OR IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN AMERICA AND DON’T CARE ABOUT AMERICAN POLITICS, YOU MAY WANT TO SCROLL DOWN A BIT.

If there is one person I’m sure of that wouldn’t be caught dead shaking his tush to Erasure is everyone’ favorite homophobic asshole, Rick Santorum. Here in the states its election day, and I will soon have the joy of voting against him in my local senate race. I’ve been force-fed his political advertisements for months now, I’m sick of them, and I need to vent.

I hate that little-dicked shitstain of humanity. Santorum’s gay-bashing/woman-hating political viewpoints are comparable to the segregationist views of conservatives in the 1950s and 60s, and will be just as reviled and embarrassing in the years to come. This stupid little twat can’t seem to understand the difference between pedophiles and homosexuals (he blamed ‘the gays’ for the Catholic Church scandal) and claims that homosexuality will bring the downfall of American society (how? who knows – I’m assuming it will involve episodes of Queer As Folk, and amazingly well-dressed men.) I hate hate hate hate HATE him.

The best thing about him though is that you just know someone as homophobic and hateful as him goes home at night, he waits till the wife is sound asleep, and then spanks his tiny cock while looking at hot hot gay porno. When he’s booted from the Senate I hope he sinks into a spiral of self-hating depression that will end with him being found half-dead in a sleazy motel room, stroking the cock of a tweaked-out Ted Haggard while Mark Foley and two of his boy-toys take turns pounding his uptight asshole raw.

OFFENSIVE POLITICAL RANT DONE. THANK YOU.

Ahhh…that felt GOOD. Anyways, here are some rare Erasure b-sides. Play them on your iPod when you vote today. I’ll have some more great Erasure tracks tomorrow or early Thursday.

Erasure
Sometimes (extended mix)
Sometimes (shiver mix)
It Doesn’t Have To (The Boop Oopa Doo Mix)
Sexuality (Private Mix)

Wow. Since I started this blog in May I was averaging about 1,000 individual hits a month – and I thought that was totally awesome. But now, thanks to blogs like Lost In The 80s, A Closet Of Curiosities, and most notably Totally Fuzzy, I’m getting more than 1,000 hits a day! Hits from all over the world too – I finally got a long-awaited hit from Finland, that makes me happy for some reason. Anyways, I’d like to welcome all of my new visitors, and hope you stick around (and maybe start posting some more comments people)! Let’s see how long it takes for me to alienate all of you because of technological problems/overly obscure music/offensive rants.

Oh, and one more thing, if you’re reading this Jamey, email me, I got some questions for you. (my email is on the sidebar, I don’t link to it as to avoid spambots).

School Of Fish – Live In L.A.
I never heard of School Of Fish until about two days ago – a day after I bought this record. I only picked up because of its interesting choice of covers (Father Figure and Takin’ Care Of Business!) and was pleasantly surprised with how good the whole thing was. After doing some quick Googling I was bummed to see that the band broke up after two albums. I was even more bummed to see that Josh Clayton-Felt, their lead singer/guitar player, died at age of 32 from testicular cancer. I now desperately want to seek out the two solo albums he recorded before his way-too-soon death.

This live EP was labeled at the record store as a ‘promo import’ and I don’t think anything on it is available on CD. If I’m wrong, or if any of you have any additional info on these guys please let me know.

School Of Fish – Live In L.A.
1. Father Figure
2. That’s All Right Mama
3. Takin’ Care Of Business
4. King Of The Dollar
5. Talk Like Strangers
3. Deep End

Aerosmith – Once Is Enough
Yeah, they suck now but they used to be the rock! ‘Dream On’? ‘Mama Kin’? ‘Toys In The Attic’? Totally make you rock out with your cock out. This blues-tinged rocker is seriously groovin’ and its relegation to the B-side to the vastly inferior ‘Dude (Looks Like A Lady)’ is utterly confounding.

Steve Stevens – Warm Female
For some reason my memory of seeing Billy Idol for the first time is crystal clear. I was watching MTV and the video for ‘Born To Be A Lover’ came on (if you want to see it you got a computer, you got YouTube, don’t be so damn lazy). I was probably eight at the time and for some reason I was more captivated by his freaky guitar player than either Billy’s scary sneer or the song itself. I think he was the first person I ever saw that had massively huge hair – seriously it was like someone killed a poodle and put it on his head. Anyways, as most of you probably know that walking cosmetic disaster was Steve Stevens – a stellar guitar player who also worked with Michael Jackson, Rick Ocasek and lots of other people. In addition to all that he’s also released some solo records that are surprisingly good. This track was the B-side to his first single ‘Atomic Playboys’ (God, how 80s is that) and was co-written by Iggy Pop.

Nothing but complete records today. I’m also experimenting with a different way of listing the tracks, so bear with me.

New Order – Round & Round (12′ Single)
This is the 80 bagillionth New Order single I’ve featured on this blog. It’s not my fault that they are just that awesome. The B-Side to this single, ‘Best And March’ is a great instrumental – and its a shame its never gotten a wide release.

Round & Round (12′ Single)
1. Round & Round (12′ Version)
2. Round & Round (Club Mix)
3. Round & Round (12′ Remix)
4. Best And March

Electronic – Get The Message
Electronic is the on-again/off-agan side project of New Order’s Bernard Summer and The Smiths’ Johnny Marr. When you consider that, the band isn’t nearly as good or as popular as it should be. Still, they released some pretty solid singles, including this one from 1991.

Get The Message (12′ Single)
1. Get The Message (Extended Mix)
2. Free Will (Extended Mix)
3. Get The Message (DNA Groove Mix)
4. Get The Message (DNA Sin Mix)

Living Colour – Live at TT The Bear
No one from Living Colour is British, but they spell their name like they are. That’s very confusing to me, of course I’m easily confused. I’m also easily distracted…I remember this one time when I was walking down the street and this…dammit, see what I mean? Anyways, when Living Colour first burst onto the scene in 1988 they earned a lot of critical acclaim, and needless comparisons to Jimi Hendrix. Has there ever been a rock group fronted by a black dude that hasn’t been compared to Hendrix? Shit, I’ve heard people compare fucking Sevendust to Jimi Hendrix, and they have about as much in common with Hendrix as Suzanne Vega does. Living Colour sounds like Living Colour, and not many other bands. These live tracks were taken off of a 12′ promo single for ‘Cult Of Personality.’ Strangely, it has no live cut of that song. Don’t let that stop you from checking this four-track set out though – their cover of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Talkin’ Bout A Revolution’ alone makes it worth the download.

Living Colour – Live At TT The Bear
1. Talkin’ Bout A Revolution
2. Glamour Boys
3. Open Letter (To A Landlord)
4. Middle Man

Okay, I fucked up again and put the wrong YMO songs up a few days ago. It’s been fixed now. If you ever find that a file you’ve downloaded is wrong, skips alot or is otherwise fucked (oh, and it happens…A LOT) let me know, and you’ll get a free cookie.

I hope all of you had a delightfully disturbing Halloween. I spent my Halloween having my mind fucked at a Negativland concert. Negativland, for those of you who don’t know, are a highly influential sound collage/experimental music band from San Francisco who have been releasing revolutionary recordings since the early 80s. They helped lay the groundwork for mash-ups, intelligent dance music, glitch-pop and countless other experimental music movements since then – and I haven’t even mentioned their work fighting copyrights and intellectual property issues. Check out their site and their wiki for more info. If they’re coming to your town I highly recommend checking them out.

Since Negativland has burnt me out my need to listen and share obscuro records for the moment, so I’ve decided to post some stuff people actually might be looking for. But don’t worry, I have a compilation of radio news broadcasts from 1983 that I’ll be uploading very soon.

I’m not kidding.

The Raconteurs
Hands (Live)
It’ Ain’t Easy
The lack of Raconteurs B-sides makes me very sad. Jack White is a fucking workhorse, I do not believe that the band only recorded the10 songs that are on their album. Come on you Detroit bastard, get with the import singles already! What’s an obsessive music geek to do? All I got are these live tracks from the ‘Hands’ single. Their cover of ‘It Ain’t Easy’ is pretty good.

Arctic Monkeys
Stickin’ To The Floor
7
I posted an Arctic Monkeys B-side before, so why not again? Both of these are off of the import single to ‘When The Sun Goes Down.’ Semi-random comment: I love this guy’s voice.

Beck – Halo Of Gold
The B-side to ‘Tropicalia’, the first 45 I ever bought.

Franz Ferdinand
Get Away
The Fallen (Acoustic)
Sure, they may be redundant, overrated and more than a little bit gay, but I still love them. ‘Get Away’ is the B-side to ‘Do You Want To’ and is very ’60s mod. Their acoustic take on ‘The Fallen’ is excellent and watch a motherfucker to record (it skipped like crazy) so download it and enjoy.

Kate Bush – Sexual Healing
Okay, so she doesn’t blend with The Raconteurs, Franz Ferdinand and so on, but I like her nonetheless. This is the b-side to ‘King Of The Mountain’ her first single off her underheard 2005 album ‘Aerial.’ Unfortunately, it’s off a picture disc, so the quality is kind of meh.

Time for the obligitory Halloween-related download!

The Original Music From ABC-TV’s Dark Shadows
Dark Shadows was the best vampire soap opera ever! Okay, so it was the only vampire soap opera ever, but whatever, my hypothesis still works. I wasn’t around when the show first aired, but I know a bit about it. What most people don’t know is that it started out as a fairly bland run-of-the-mill soap opera with mediocre ratings – until about a year into the show, when the vampire Barnabas Collins showed up and fucked shit up hardcore.

I respect a show that does something like that, and I think others should follow in its path! Think about it for a second. Yes Dear is a shitty stupid little show, now imagine if zombies showed up and ate half the cast! That would be totally awesome! ER sucks…so maybe a werewolf should show up and eat John Stamos (of course, I’ve been wishing that would happen for years.) Law & Order has been on for over a decade now and is getting a little stale, I say an alien invasion is in order.

Hey Dick Wolf, call me!

Oh yeah….the soundtrack. This album came out in 1969 and features the series score and some odd songs featuring monologues by Quentin and Barnabas. If you liked the show you should dig it.

Now for some non-scary stuff.

Yellow Magic Orchestra
Nice Age
Day Tripper
I have no idea who these guys are. I picked up this record on a whim, just because of the insane cover, and was delighted to find the music is just as nutty as the sleeve protecting it. ‘Nice Age’ sounds like a combination of The Cars and Gary Numan (in Japan) and their cover of ‘Day Tripper’ is just…fucked.

Queen – Westwood Radio One Concert
This was my biggest find from the recent record show that was in Pittsburgh. I’ve seen a few ‘Superstar Concert Series’ LPs before, but I never wanted to shell out the money for them. Of course, that was before I found one by Queen. I payed too much for this (40 bucks) but I don’t care, it’s motherfucking Queen! Taken from their 1986 tour (which happened to be their last) this 18-song concert is a great collection of ‘classic’ Queen as well as their later stuff. Highlights include the opener ‘One Vision’ (which I mistakenly labeled ‘One Hope’ in the zip file – sorry about that), a seriously rocking cover of ‘Tutti Frutti’ and the underrated ‘Seven Seas Of Rhyme.’ I split it up into four zip files because it was so damn big.

Part 1
1. One Hope
2. Tie Your Mother Down
3. Hammer To Fall
4. Seven Seas Of Rhyme
5. It’s A Kind Of Magic

Part 2
6. Under Pressure
7. Another One Bites The Dust
8. I Want To Break Free
9. Instrumental (if you know what this is let me know)
10. Now I’m Here

Part 3
11. Love Of My Life
12. Is This The World We Created
13. You’re So Square (Baby, I Don’t Care)
14. Hello Mary Lou
15. Tutti Frutti

Part 4
16. Bohemian Rhapsody
17. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
18. We Are The Champions

My .mac account is sucking up a storm right now and making it damn near impossible for me to post entire albums as zip files. Once I get that figured out I’ll be uploading an awesome Queen set from 1986 taken off of a Westwood One radio concert. Until then, here’s some stuff that I promised yesterday.

Day Of The Dead Original Soundtrack
The Dead Walk
Escape Invasion
If Tomorrow Comes
Break Down
The World Inside Your Eyes
The Dead Suite
Since it’s almost Halloween I figured I should start posting some scary shit, and since I didn’t pick up that David Hasselhoff album I saw today this one will have to do.

Supposedly the soundtrack to Day Of The Dead is incredibly hard to find, unless you live in Pittsburgh (which I do). As any zombiephile can tell you, Pittsburgh is the zombie capital of the US as all three of Romero’s original trilogy (Night, Dawn, And Day) were filmed in the greater Pittsburgh area. The soundtrack to Day was pressed in Pittsburgh (by Saturn Records) I guess they only sold them in Pittsburgh. I’ve seen 10 or so copies of this at several record stores in the greater Pittsburgh area – Hell, I bought two. It was released on CD a bit ago, but with a limited run of 3000 copies, it went pretty fast and is now a sought-after collector’s item. I wish I had that one, because it has some bonus tracks on it.

The first half of the album is alright, with some decent instrumental tracks making up for the god-awful songs that feature singing by “Sputzy Sparacino.” The real highlight is the long form instrumental ‘The Dead Suite’ which is the entire B-side of the album.

Siouxsie And The Banshees
Song From The Edge Of The World (7 Inch Mix)
Song From The Edge Of The World (Columbus Mix)
Mechanical Eyes
The Whole Price Of Blood
Siouxsie And The Banshees is one of those bands I have absolutely no excuse for not knowing more about. I only have a couple of their singles and a greatest hits set, and that makes me sad. Hopefully I’ll get some more soon. These tracks are off of the 12-inch Song From The Edge Of The World EP. The Columbus mix of the song was recently put on a greatest hits package, and the other two b-sides are only available on the band’s pricey box set

Bruce Springsteen
57 Channels (And Nothing On) Little Steven Mix Version 1
Part Man, Part Monkey
Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!!! Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!!

Sorry about that, it’s a reflex. A love of Bruce Springsteen runs in my family – I inherited it from my mom. I read an article saying that hipster kids have been getting into him recently, which is cool because his anti-war, fuck-the-man stance would mesh well with them. Both these songs are off of the 57 Channels 12-inch single. ‘Part Man, Part Monkey’ is also on the Tracks and 18 Tracks collections if you’re interested in picking it up on CD.