Good early (early!) morning! It’s 04:03 on the first workday post-Thanksgiving weekend… and exactly one day after the last episode went out into the world… it’s a new strategy… leveraging neuroses and insomnia for the benefit of this podcast!

This episode is called “Late to the Party”! And it’s all about artists we discovered late (late!) in their careers! The links below are for clicking… if you’re late to this whole World Wide Web experience…

Times ain’t tough, they’re tedious! It’s our hayday…. #bogmonstermusic

The sounds of lateness! Coming at you early! #bogmonstermusic

Don’t sleep on this aged playlist, neither!

Dan’s Notes

Jeff Rosenstock

Okay so I have been onboard for most of Mr Rosenstock’s solo era, but I missed out on enjoying the first solid decade of his musical output due to pre-judging his old band due to the fact they they were a ska punk band with what seemed like a not so creative teenager’s idea of an incendiary name ( “Bomb The Music Industry”) travelling in the same circles as a bunch of bands I just wasn’t all that into so they really didn’t end up on my radar at all st the time. However, when Rosenstock served as musical guest on an infamous episode of the cable access incarnation of The Chris Gethard Show (where the entire first fifteen minutes or so of the show were entirely derailed by the audience chanting “Eat More Butts” over and over again until the perplexed host through to Jeff and his band to play a selection from his solo debut “I Look Like Shit” from 2013. He has since become one of my favorite artists, and Bomb The Music Industry weren’t actually all that bad of a band to begin with,  yet as I end up saying about multiple other artists throughout the episode, there was definitely a time where all music was not necessarily just there for the listening at no cost whenever and during that time, sometimes things just never ended up entering your listening orbit until actively sought out and I let myself miss out on some great earlier works from one of my favorite musicians because I thought the name of his old band was kind of silly (the guy who has acts with names like Fun With Chainsaws on his musical resume). Regardless, I’m glad I caught on when I did as he is definitely one of my favourite current artists going.

Jay Reatard

The mid-late 00’s were a weird time and I grew away from a lot of “the scene” as it were during that period. I worked something like 60 hours a week between my line cook gig and weekend bouncer shifts at the same Irish pub where I was frying fish’n’chips and microwaving prefab Cornish pasties during the week, while dating a DJ who specialized in rare breakbeats and listening to mostly weirdo abstract hip hop and doomy gloomy atmospheric post-metally things and therefore there were a lot of things that just didn’t end up entering into my listening orbit, and the masterful garagey power pop singer songwriter born Jimmy Lee Lindsay was someone I had filed away as “one of those Vice type dudes” and not really looked into when I really could have gotten in on the ground floor with his solo output while he was still around. Lindsay even played a show here in Halifax as part of a late 00’s Pop Explosion lineup one year while I was living here and little did I realize that would have been my one opportunity to catch him live, which I unfortunately missed. Eventually I did check out his great Blood Visions and Watch Me Fall full-lengths, true power pop gems of the early part of the millennium’s garage rock and roll revival, and little did I know that I had even been introduced to his music prior to going solo via a friend who was a big fan of his old band The Lost Sounds and had played them for me a few times years before but i had not made the connection between the two. Lindsay unfortunately passed away far too young in 2010 after an overdose so we only got a limited amount of wonderful music from him during that time, and I wish I had taken the time earlier to fully appreciate his art more while he was still around.

World/Inferno Friendship Society

Funny how something like one lukewarm review of a debut will cause you to just not bother investigating an artist’s entire catalogue. That’s is the case when it comes to me and the works of The World/Inferno Friendship Society, and I will admit that it took the passing of frontman Jack Terricloth a few years ago for me to finally take a chance on them and admit my error in not looking into their music previously, though the mix of punk, jazz, klezmer, occasional fifties-style crooning, and general school band-meets-theatre-kid-who-developed-a taste-for-Emma-Goldman-essays energy the band brought to the table over almost two decades maybe seemed a little out of place on the roster of NJ hardcore label Gern Blandsten Records when their debut first came out in 1997 on that label. The hapless HeartattaCk reviewer who was tasked with giving the band’s debut full length on that label a listen at a time seemed perplexed by and genuinely unenthused for their melange of genres, which led to me (who used that sort of this as a major taste making guide at the time) just entirely missing the boat on their output due to sheer ignorance until Terricloth’s passing a couple of years ago and accompanying online talk lauding the music he had made. Dear reader I realize my error as their mix of theatricality, theory and genre-hopping music nerdery is exactly my shit. This is music for the sloppy after party at the anarchist book fair, and their 2005 full length Red Eyed Soul finds itself in regular rotation on my end still over two years after his passing. The band was known for wild energetic live performances as well, especially at their annual Halloween “Hallowmas” shows, with Terricloth cutting a figure not unlike a younger mustacheless John Waters weaving around a legion of horn players, percussionists and guitarists and enthralling the crowd with between song monologues on top of their wild and catchy jams. While not for everyone I am sure, I would still recommend you not make my initial mistake and give their music a shot. Terricloth’s pre-WIFS band Sticks And Stones were much more of a straight ahead punk rock affair but their few EPs from the late 80’s/early 90’s are also worth seeking out.

Armand Hammer

Ever hear an album, fall in love with it and then realize it’s the artists’ EIGHTH full length? That is my relationship with Armand Hammer via their 2023 full length “We Buy Diabetic Test Strips”. I am a recent devotee of prolific NY underground rap wunderkind billy woods, and his 2022 full length Aethiopes was one of my favorite albums of last year. And have I mentioned how prolific woods is? This most collaboration with ELUCID under the Armand Hammer banner, this time featuring a revolving door of today’s top noisy/glitchy avant- garde hip hop beatmakers like jpegmafia, Pink Siifu (with help from Philly experimental artist and frequent woods collaborator Moor Mother) and even El-P is billy woods’ fourth(!) full length since the start of 2022 and the group’s eighth collaboration together in the past decade. With catalogues like this, my philosophy is to just pick a jumping on point, try and keep up from there, and fill in from there as best I can so I was totally unaware of how deep the Armand Hammer catalogue goes on it’s own let alone woods’ total output. So yeah, this is me finally jumping on board with album number eight by a long running and respected group, here we go. Regardless of my lateness to the party, AH’s “We Buy Diabetic Test Strips” is a great album for horrifying times where we know things are not going to be okay right now. It is bleak but enthralling, and the experimental atmospheric vibes even lean towards almost industrial sounds in with their wordy abstract hip hop onslaught. Next on my homework list is previous AH full length HARAM, produced entirely by The Alchemist. I guess there are worse problems to have than than even more great music to catch up on by a killer pairing of artists I suppose.

Ink And Dagger

Another case of “bad review+lack of immediate access to actually hear it on my own=never really checking something out until much much later”. I was a big fan of Philly straightedge emo screechers Frail, who I first heard through the Ebullition XXX comp (discussed last show), during their brief existence, at a time when the music that spoke to me most was in my mind very serious and earnest and “heartfelt”, so when I heard their new band was a little more of a high concept endeavour involving face paint and costumes and pretending to be vampires or something, in my mind my favorite emo band had just turned into that days version Ghost or AFI or something and just not something that really appealed to me at the time. Of course, had I actually listened to Philly’s Ink And Dagger would realize that while they may have added a little more rock in their riffs and tempered the dying-bird shrieks of Sean McCabe’s vocals in Frail with a little more gruffness (not to mention the addition of heavy vampiric imagery in the lyrics), they were still a pretty great rockin but spooky and theatrical hardcore band in the vein of maybe like Swiz at a Halloween party. Part of my reason for finally going back and revisiting them was finding out that they briefly featured weirdo comedy provocateur Eric Wareheim (of “Tim And Eric Awesome Show Great Job” and “Tim And Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” fame) on bass after his time in Philly’s Elements Of Need (who had also released a split 7” with Frail during their run), though Wareheim has stated that he didn’t really have much of any input on the band’s music during the brief time he played with them. Luckily, their music has stayed fairly easily accessible via streaming services, and I’ve heard rumours of a possible oral history project documentimg vocalist McCabe’s notorious “pranks” (like dressing up in a fur coat to pelt notorious hardline vegan straightedgers Earth Crisis with yogurt at a big festival where they shared a bill) being in the works as well, so you should give these Philly creatures of the night a chance.

Miscellany

Matt’s Notes

I’m in a funny situation lately!

I’m in a relationship for the first time since uh… earlier this year! But it’s healthier than any relationship since my marriage! And not the dicey, stressful later years of it, either!

ANYWAY…

I’m loving (loving!) my job here in the Maritime Wilds! But… I also need another job if I’m going to sustain A) a roof over my head, B) child support payments, C) food, and D) the occasional record store splurge… so if you can help hook a (n undead) brother up, we’d be much obliged!

These are all issues to do with growing older… and gnarlier (more gnarly?)…

And so it goes with my list for this episode! I’ve been late to the party for nearly all my favorite artists… mainly because many of them were in their respective haydays before I was born… or in my early childhood… so… I’ll leave the Replacements and Hüsker Dü and Motörhead and uh… a bunch of others… OFF the list… cause maybe they’re a little TOO OBVIOUS at this point…

Since we haven’t actually recorded the episode yet, I can’t say for certain if we spoke to all of these or a few of them or none of them (unlikely) or what. The teacher (and the parent) in me is like “good for you for getting something done slightly early for a change”. The middle-aged punk in me blows joint-smoke in that other dude’s general direction, rolls his eyes, and says disdainfully:

Eat my shorts, man.

Alkaline Trio & The Lawrence Arms

We’ve been doing this podcast since last December, and for sure I’ve mentioned the Trio (as they’re called by us ardent fans) for many (most??) of these episodes so far. So here it is again! Here they are. Again. Again!

What do I know? I got into them in spring of 2022 when I thought for sure I’d be back to work within a few months of being unemployed… when I was doing lots (LOTS!) of interviews.

Fun fact: I’ve unsuccessfully interviewed for administrative, staff, and/or faculty roles with some of the best universities and colleges in Canada! Including, but not limited to, U of Toronto… UBC… U of Alberta… Athabasca (for the Ed Tech, natch)… and a bunch of others (a GREAT BUNCH, you can trust) and, to paraphrase just about every Award Loser ever… It was NOT an honor just to be nominated…

Back when I was an unemployed single Dad with enough cash on hand to bankroll a once-in-a-lifetime vinyl collection but not a house… enough dough to smoke and drink my fill but not enough to say… retrain to something a bit more marketable than “learning technologist”… enough coin to date a woman in another town for several months and call it an “open relationship” but not enough to buy the confidence to quit subscribing to Match, Bumble, and Tinder… which as my mom noted in the car today sounds, together, like a law firm out of a Charles Dickens novel…

Oh man, those really WEREN’T the days, come to think of it! [Beavis voice: Dude, you said “come”][Butthead voice: Huh huh huh ne he huh hyuh]

Uhhh… [clears throat]… so according to Discogs the Trio started in 1996 and has put out [shifts papers around on his desk frantically]… uh… around 20 records, going just by long-players and the 8 album Past Live series… and that’s not saying anything about comps, singles, EP’s, or the B-sides and rarities comp… so… spring of 2022… about 26 years late to that particular party… [crumples up the paper on his desk, starts throwing paper balls across the living room of his giant and ultimately unaffordable apartment]…

IMPORTANT UPDATE: They have a new record coming out early next year!!

And Larry Arms… like the Trio, around for a couple of decades but way (way!) less commercially successful… and uh… [mumble, mutter]… yeah… formed in ’99… they have seven LP’s and two compilations… and I’ve been into them since just… uh… earlier this year…. and when I had the resources to burn I got their logo tattooed on my left forearm right above the wrist… ya know… where you wear your watch??

In conclusion, there’s something about Chicago, man… or maybe there’s something about the nether regions of BC and Atlantic Canada that makes me THINK there’s something about Chicago, man. Either way. Same-same. Second City. Go Cubs. Pizza. Blues music. Ack.

John Coltrane

You can’t really be much later to the party than when the artist in question is uh… DECEASED (like… DEAD, daddy-o!). As in… living a higher OR non-existent life… depending on your beliefs… since 1967. So late to the party… but maybe right about on time for the after (life) party??

Like with most jazz music, you could tell me nearly anything about the artist and I’d have to go “Uh huh? Oh yeah? Do tell”.

I’m not obsessive about it the way I am about lots of the ah… PUNK and ALTERNATIVE and WHAT-HAVE-YOU… it’s more like… I know what I like…

So… from what I was able to glean from scanning Wikipedia for a minute or a few…

The man was just forty when he passed… and spent many of those years battling heroine and alcohol addictions… and he was posthumously canonized as a saint by the African Orthodox Church… and is the namesake of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco.

When I was forty I was just starting out on the job that I would ultimately lose (with prejudice!). I ran a full marathon. I’d finished my doctorate. And here’s a (deceased) guy out there creating something immortal. No biggie. No siree…

Stop me before I start going on about how I discovered jazz as a teen in Fredericton after landing on the amazing CBC Radio 2 show After Hours hosted by Ross Porter… and how I’d sit there in the evening in my basement bedroom in my (single) dad’s townhouse near Skyline Acres and Southwood Park on Fredericton’s South Side… listening to whatever Ross was putting on… reading Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and writing some terribly bad (but also terribly enjoyable) maybe-stoned teenaged poetry…

Somebody please stop me…

Leatherface

This is a case where I got into the band after EIGHT records… after their original stint as a band (1988-1994) and they were well into their second (and longer) run from 1998 until 2012… which would see them release another four albums…

It was anyone’s guess in the spring of 2000— when Gumby’s Brother Ben placed a significant mail order which included many of us living in the same overcrowded Halifax apartment— that the Rocket from Sunderland would go on for another dozen or so years… and they continue as an artistic enterprise of sorts, releasing as recently as 2022 reissues of early albums, as well as various merch via their Bandcamp page… to say nothing of the very occasional but also very significant release by guitarist and yowler Frankie Norman Warsaw Stubbs.

The men of Leatherface looked old even when they were young. A Google search of eighties and early nineties era photos reveals men who in their late twenties could have passed for their mid-forties… or older.

As an additional note, at least three of the key members of the band have passed away… early, relative to full lifespan… including bassist Andy Crighton (1998), original guitarist Dickie Hammond (2015), and original drummer Andrew Laing (2023). This was a band who were hard-living and whose members have a tendency to pass away early, but made for many… myself included… the most life-affirming music ever.

When I first picked up the brilliant split LP with Hot Water Music… their first record of their second run… it would’ve been easy to think this group might only be around for another few years… and so I will say I am late to the party… even though I was around twenty-one at the time… more than half a lifetime ago. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have seen them at a show in Worcester, Mass in 2000… with Avail, no less! And in subsequent years I’ve purchased everything I can get my hands on… t-shirts, DVD’s, vinyl test pressings, and more… getting Stubbs lyrics from “Sour Grapes” tattooed on my right arm a few weeks after I finished my doctorate. To this day I thrill to learn of Stubbs solo projects… or appearances on others’ albums, including the excellent Yesterday’s Ring (Montreal) album from 2022 “Goodbye Night Life”.

I was late to this particular party… but the party continued for quite some time, regardless.

A Tribe Called Quest

I had the opportunity not that long ago to stack my record collection.

A brief history of said collection, since you didn’t ask?

Cassettes as a youngster! Including under the XMas tree! All now lost to history.

Numerous CD’s and cassettes and vinyl accumulate from the early nineties until my thirtieth year on planet Earth.

All now lost to history!

Then… digital music…

AND THEN… marital and career nosedive leading to…

Massive middle-aged vinyl spending spree which lasts closer to two years than to a year-and-a-half.

And that’s where the Tribe comes in.

Fascinating, huh?

And it tickles me somehow that the Estate of Lou Reed owns the rights to one of their biggest songs. Overachieve much?

Angels & Airwaves

Erm. I like it better than Blink?? I own a couple of their records so they must be good. I have a strict policy on ditching vinyl that I can’t get with… if it can’t go in the regular semi-random record rotation then it’s taking up perfectly good space in the plastic boxes in the music room of my far-too-expensive and definitely unsustainably high-priced apartment. Out the door they go!

They’ve been around since… 2005? I bought those records earlier this year? Or maybe late last year? From Barnacle Records in Kamloops which is on the other side of the country ALONG WITH MY KIDS?

Let us also note the Atom Willard connection… the same Willard who is part of Matt Skiba’s band Alkaline Trio and also Matt Skiba’s other band Lektron…

I am eighteen years late to this party. Maybe seventeen. This is as close to most Blink as I’ll probably get to anytime soon (or ever)… and uh… aliens are real! Or something.

Blue Rodeo

That whole narrative about the record collection from the ATCQ segment earlier? Same thing with Blue Rodeo, I’ll cop to that.

Except it is impossible to be a card-carrying Late Gen X Canadian (AKA The Greatest Generation) without having encountered them on MuchMusic an/or local rock radio.

Are they as popular as the Tragically Hip? Probably not. But you almost can’t talk about one without at least being close to mentioning the other.

Yeah? Yeah.

Anyway, my Aunt Jodi and Uncle Corrie couldn’t make it to see Jim Cuddy and Sons (or rather, one son and their friend) at the 506 Container Village and they generously gifted me the tickets! And that was the third date between me and my New Girlfriend! Around three weeks ago?

And we were listening to Outskirts the night before.

And so I’ve lately gone from being a passively middle-class-Canadian-fan-by-default to being a vinyl-owning, ticket-buying (or receiving) full-throated BR enthusiast. You know who else is good? Bad Religion.

Are you fascinated? I think you must be. The silence belies the fascination. Yessiree.

We are extremely (extremely!) grateful you’ve chosen to crash this party with us! Until next time, fellow fiends!

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ November 6, 2023 11:53 am