GIFT OF CRAP: Quarter century-old noise rock sampler discovered by nerds, sent to web
Unlistenable & cryptic. Perfect for the New York Times Sunday
edition or PaperThinWalls.com, don't ya think?
Blame the couple who bugged me for MP3's of Chainsaw magazine's Annoy Your Neighbor With This Tape a couple weeks back. After Googling for it, The Gift of Noise -- a vinyl LP from 1983, was also returned. Music blog nerds had ripped both to the Net.
The Gift of Noise was, straightforwardly enough, a compilation LP of US noise bands, published in 1983 by the New Rose Records imprint, L'Invitation au Suicide, a small French record company run by a man named Yann Farcy. A booklet that came with the record showed a stack of LPs belonging to one of the contributors: Throbbing Gristle's Thee Psychick Sacrifice jumped out at you.
It presented five acts: The Psyclones, Smersh, F/i (which stood for Surfin' Fuhrers incognito), No Trend and Senseless Hate, the last being your host's very old two-man punk rock and noise band. (It's me and a drummer who will remain unnamed.)
Senseless Hate had been on the Chainsaw fanzine Annoy tape and, if memory serves, that cassette or something like it had found its way into the hands of Brian Frith and Julie Ladd, a couple from Eureka, California, who ran a noise band label specializing in tape releases. Called Ladd-Frith, it still exists and a quick search turns it up on the web.
Through Ladd-Frith (on the record, The Psyclones), Farcy -- who was from Le Havre -- coordinated with the other acts who'd been trading cassettes with each other.
I didn't even see the record until two or three years after it came out. One copy was at Midnight Records in New York City. The sticker says I paid $7.98 before tax. The Gift of Noise wasn't something I would have normally wasted a penny on but I rationalized that since I was on it, it would be better to buy the copy or I'd probably never see another. That turned out to be the case.
From start to finish, The Gift of Noise is consistently dreadful. I believe that was the entire point although it's possible others involved in it might disagree. Something from Othello comes to mind: "If you have any music that may not be heard, to 't again."
Twenty-five years later, MP3 music blog nerds are collectively trying to put every piece of obscure vinyl they can find onto the web. Mostly so others of like mind have a reason to nudge page counts. Is it something worth doing? Ehhh, the jury's still out.
The Gift of Noise is here.
Senseless Hate logo and cheapo horror movie snaps from deluxe
booklet accompanying the LP. Once had it put it on an athletic jersey.
Mo' Nerd Rock
The Gift of Noise relates to the recent nerd rock pages on this blog. An LP that deservedly sank without trace until 2008, it's the same flavor of thing one now sees regularly run up the flagpole in the pages of big newspaper music sections.
From today's Los Angeles Times Calendar section one reads of the "guilty pleasure" of freak folk. Not Devendra Banhart's freak folk, but even cooler stuff, mind you.
"Some might say this music is badly played and badly recorded," writes Casey Dolan of groups called MV & EE and the Golden Road and The Sunburned Hand of Man, the latter "a band to give one seizures."
The entire article, a short -- really, is a stereotype of the gush that's produced for the 21st century gifts of nerd rock.
One looks for the word paradigm to show up, signalling the reporter was a liberal arts major in college. There it is in the last paragraph, although a recommendation from National Public Radio is sadly missing. Greil Marcus is cited because, as a semi-famous rock critic turned alleged intellectual, his is the voice of authority, said to know about Old Weird America, a place this stuff is claimed to call home. (The Marcus invocation's not shown here. Search the web, it'll be easy enough to find.)
"The truth is that there is a naive nihilism at play here and you either joyfully embrace it, putting aside your critical paradigms and logarithms, or you leave it alone, content to scratch your head over more complex and demanding fare."
Dilemma solved, I now leave it alone and listen only to more complex and demanding fare, like Sugarland.
Nerd rock is virtually always obstinately threadbare and jokey. A stern rule of it is that one always must wink in a knowing way at your national audience of ten to fifty rock critics and their followers. The artistic wink signifies that, yes, you know you can't sing or play a lick and you look bad, but being inept, annoying and hopeless is far more hip than being, let's say, Sugarland.
Unlistenable & cryptic. Perfect for the New York Times Sunday
edition or PaperThinWalls.com, don't ya think?
Blame the couple who bugged me for MP3's of Chainsaw magazine's Annoy Your Neighbor With This Tape a couple weeks back. After Googling for it, The Gift of Noise -- a vinyl LP from 1983, was also returned. Music blog nerds had ripped both to the Net.
The Gift of Noise was, straightforwardly enough, a compilation LP of US noise bands, published in 1983 by the New Rose Records imprint, L'Invitation au Suicide, a small French record company run by a man named Yann Farcy. A booklet that came with the record showed a stack of LPs belonging to one of the contributors: Throbbing Gristle's Thee Psychick Sacrifice jumped out at you.
It presented five acts: The Psyclones, Smersh, F/i (which stood for Surfin' Fuhrers incognito), No Trend and Senseless Hate, the last being your host's very old two-man punk rock and noise band. (It's me and a drummer who will remain unnamed.)
Senseless Hate had been on the Chainsaw fanzine Annoy tape and, if memory serves, that cassette or something like it had found its way into the hands of Brian Frith and Julie Ladd, a couple from Eureka, California, who ran a noise band label specializing in tape releases. Called Ladd-Frith, it still exists and a quick search turns it up on the web.
Through Ladd-Frith (on the record, The Psyclones), Farcy -- who was from Le Havre -- coordinated with the other acts who'd been trading cassettes with each other.
I didn't even see the record until two or three years after it came out. One copy was at Midnight Records in New York City. The sticker says I paid $7.98 before tax. The Gift of Noise wasn't something I would have normally wasted a penny on but I rationalized that since I was on it, it would be better to buy the copy or I'd probably never see another. That turned out to be the case.
From start to finish, The Gift of Noise is consistently dreadful. I believe that was the entire point although it's possible others involved in it might disagree. Something from Othello comes to mind: "If you have any music that may not be heard, to 't again."
Twenty-five years later, MP3 music blog nerds are collectively trying to put every piece of obscure vinyl they can find onto the web. Mostly so others of like mind have a reason to nudge page counts. Is it something worth doing? Ehhh, the jury's still out.
The Gift of Noise is here.
Senseless Hate logo and cheapo horror movie snaps from deluxe
booklet accompanying the LP. Once had it put it on an athletic jersey.
Mo' Nerd Rock
The Gift of Noise relates to the recent nerd rock pages on this blog. An LP that deservedly sank without trace until 2008, it's the same flavor of thing one now sees regularly run up the flagpole in the pages of big newspaper music sections.
From today's Los Angeles Times Calendar section one reads of the "guilty pleasure" of freak folk. Not Devendra Banhart's freak folk, but even cooler stuff, mind you.
"Some might say this music is badly played and badly recorded," writes Casey Dolan of groups called MV & EE and the Golden Road and The Sunburned Hand of Man, the latter "a band to give one seizures."
The entire article, a short -- really, is a stereotype of the gush that's produced for the 21st century gifts of nerd rock.
One looks for the word paradigm to show up, signalling the reporter was a liberal arts major in college. There it is in the last paragraph, although a recommendation from National Public Radio is sadly missing. Greil Marcus is cited because, as a semi-famous rock critic turned alleged intellectual, his is the voice of authority, said to know about Old Weird America, a place this stuff is claimed to call home. (The Marcus invocation's not shown here. Search the web, it'll be easy enough to find.)
"The truth is that there is a naive nihilism at play here and you either joyfully embrace it, putting aside your critical paradigms and logarithms, or you leave it alone, content to scratch your head over more complex and demanding fare."
Dilemma solved, I now leave it alone and listen only to more complex and demanding fare, like Sugarland.
Nerd rock is virtually always obstinately threadbare and jokey. A stern rule of it is that one always must wink in a knowing way at your national audience of ten to fifty rock critics and their followers. The artistic wink signifies that, yes, you know you can't sing or play a lick and you look bad, but being inept, annoying and hopeless is far more hip than being, let's say, Sugarland.
posted by George Smith at 1:07 PM
4 Comments:
wasnt sensless hat JT and Joe Hanna?
why not upload scans or PDFs of Chainsaw issues!!!!!!!
i yam cool cuz i read SPED
Briefly, near the end. It was my band and the material published on the Gift of Noise LP and Annoy Your Neighbor With This Tape was prior to their involvement. Senseless Hate released a number of cassette only releases during the run of Chainsaw. One recording of them in the band exists and it resulted in one cut on the old LV punk rock CD, "Get the Hell Out." That came from a Halloween gig opening for the Blissters in Allentown.
I would have scanned and posted Chainsaws if I had any. All my copies were lost years ago. I saw a collection of them sold on eBay a few years back but only have the display photo from it. They buyer contacted me but wouldn't scan any of the material.
I actually really love everything on Gift of Noise and I have not been alive long enough to have nostalgia attached to it.
I'd love more Senseless Hate, In My Chair cracked me up.
That was the general idea. It used to crack me up, too.
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