(Personal Vinyl Collection) Alice In Chains - Jar Of Flies (1994)

Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies/Sap

Side 1:
Rotten Apple
Nutshell
I Stay Away
No Excuses
Whale & Wasp

Side 2:
Don't Follow
Swing On This

Side 3:
Brother
Got Me Wrong
Right Turn
Am I Inside
Love Song

Side 4:
Unplayable - etching of band logo on entire side of record.


There came a time in the mid 1980's when any band worth their salt released an EP between every album. It served well to keep the fans satiated for new material and would give the band some space to spread out, share some of their favorite cover songs or delve into a side of their own sound that wasn't exactly their focus on their full lengths. There were some epically great EP's that were released in that time but it was a handful of hard rock, metal and hair bands who would release acoustic EP's that set the wave in full motion. Most notable were Tesla's "Five Man Acoustical Jam" and Guns N' Roses' groundbreaking - err... ground DESTROYING "Lies" EP. Though Alice In Chains were known for their involvement in the "grunge" scene - mostly due to their hometown more than their actual sound - it was fairly obvious to the discerning listener (and watcher) that their roots were in the tight pants, big hair, cowboy boots and leather jackets world of classic rock inspired metal. Their "Sap" EP and later "Jar of Flies" (the two released together as a double gatefold on vinyl when "Jar" hit the stores) solidified those roots, uncovering their Zep 3 and early Heart influences. These two EP's weren't specifically "unplugged" but bore prominent usage of acoustic guitar and a cleaner, more up front production. I have to admit that though I was a very early fan of the band I fell out of love with them midway through their career and well before vocalist Layne Staley's untimely demise as yet another casualty of "God Smack" (so named in their fantastic song about the depths of heroin addiction that would later become the name of one of the world's most terribly derivative and unoriginal bands). At the time of it's release this collection didn't leave my turntable for a loooong time. This was one of those rare records that I immediately dubbed to cassette so as to not wear out my vinyl copy (an act generally reserved for picture discs and expensive rarities). I even went as far as to record the sound of the needle skittering across the etching on the 4th side. Upon re-listening to this record for the first time in at least 10 years or more I found that I had forgotten about many of the songs that had once made such an impression on me. There are some real gems contained here. There are some real self derivative clunkers too and a sound production that makes the acoustic guitars sound a bit too much like an old Nuno Bettencourt, Washburn commercial (for those who don't know what I'm talking about here, that's not a good thing) but all in all this is a great little trip back to the time when classic rock invaded the alternative landscape and revived and revised the arena rock sound of bands like The Who, The Stones, Zeppelin, Sabbath and Bad Company of our parents' generation into something that spoke to our generation.

In light of my research to refresh my memory on this album, I've found that this original pressing is selling for a pretty good chunk of change (in the $40 to $80 ballpark). I would be more than willing to part with this particular piece of my collection (I still have the dubbed cassette of course). If anyone out there in internet land is looking for this piece to add to their own collection, e-mail me at coh666@aol.com and make an offer!

(Personal Vinyl Collection) G.G. Allin on a pretty, sunny Sunday morning...

"Say that I'm mental, say that I'm sick
Want to put me away, say that I'm not fit
Call me a pervert, 'cause I'm always running wild
Say that I'm an animal, an abortion as a child

You'll never tame me of the things that I do
I'll always be a pervert and I'll always hate you
I'll always be an animal, work myself into a fit
I run with sleazy women and I smell like shit"

-G.G. Allin, "You'll Never Tame Me"


A lot of my friends don't understand or hell, just plain don't like my love of G.G. Allin. "He was a racist" they'll say. "Well... Not exactly", I'll say. "He was a rapist and a junkie and a piece of shit", they may retort. "Yeah, but that's a drastically severe oversimplification of the situation" I'll say. You see, G.G. is a kind of human that transcends (or transgressed?) all of that stuff. Yes, the things he said were terrible, the things he did were probably worse and no, I wouldn't want him sleeping on my couch with my little girls running around the house. G.G. is, for me a creature whose actions were a real time, unfiltered manifestation of a person who was truly broken. A lot of rockers and punks claim that they want to overthrow the establishment or burn down the world, but in reality they're fashion posers. Swipe some money under their nose and they'll sign the multi-record, major label deal and start selling cheeseburgers or tennis shoes with a smile. G.G. would have smeared shit on the contract, punched the record exec in the face and tattooed his chest with the broken ink pen. G.G. and his brother Merle experienced all kinds of things as little kids at the hands of an abusive and insane Dad (those words probably don't even start to explain the situation). G.G. was catharsis and "id" in it's purest human form. Man as animal - no better and probably worse than those things that run around on four legs, eating shit and fucking or biting whatever gets in their way. The thing that punk was supposed to be but wasn't. The thing that Iggy Pop and Sid Vicious were supposed to be but weren't.

My love affair with G.G. Allin's music came in the form of a French import compilation CD called "Dirty Love Songs". This was mostly earlier G.G. stuff - a lot of almost silly and poppy songs about sex that went over the line into the dirtier side of dirty. Songs using the most base street terminology to describe things like fecal play, urine drinking, puking and the joys and pain associated with hypodermic needles full of penicillin in the nether region to cure what ailed him. There were songs about destroying everyone and everything including himself. Songs about hating everyone and everything, including himself. You see, that's part of the thing I don't think people understand. When G.G. Allin transmitted his particular brand of hate speech, it wasn't just toward other races or sexes it was toward EVERYTHING THAT HAD OR WILL EVER EXIST. So was G.G. a racist? He sure did use the word "Nigger" and "Jew" quite a bit but not as someone who thought himself any better than those folks he was shitting upon. He certainly used the word "faggot", "slut" and "whore" but not as anyone who held himself to be above these people he punched in the face. G.G. was real and true pure nihilism and real and true and pure nihilism does not hold it's tongue from using "the N word" nor does it tip over the apple cart and then go lay down in a warm bed with clean sheets. G.G. was a machine gun with pure and unfiltered hatred and disdain for EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. When the P.C. crowd talks about "equality" they could take a cue from G.G. Allin. I thought I was broken and perverted from my upbringing. I thought I had hatred for authority. G.G. showed me the edges of that world that I hadn't even considered. For many of us, G.G. made us feel better about ourselves and our situations or gave a voice to those of us who were living in shit as a result of our childhood abuses or drug habits or sexual hang ups. It's one of those situations where a friend is constantly crying that he is going to kill himself and you load the gun and put it in his hand and call him out on it (not that many of you have ever had to experience that, I hope) or in "It's a Wonderful Life" when the Angel comes to show Jimmy Stewart how much worse it could be if he offed himself or was never born. When his father named him Jesus Christ Allin (later legally changed to Kevin Michael) at birth, little did he know that G.G. would be a sort of cathartic fire ball of a messiah for many of us. Like one of those crazed sadhus in India, covered in mud and the ashes of the dead, eating human flesh, sacrificing chickens, taking deadly poisons, flinging feces and chasing the tourists with a stick and growling at them - G.G. Allin was a Holy Saint inverted to show us the depths of suffering and for G.G. the way out of that suffering wasn't to clean up and get a job - it was a 1993 riot at a shitty punk rock venue and a narrow escape from police by diving through a plate glass window into the streets of New York, naked and covered in blood and shit and then a dive to the depths of a plastic bag filled with white powdered death. Sometimes there's not a happy ending.

My G.G. collection is mainly on CD, 7" vinyl and cassette but here are the two jewels in my collection of 12" black vinyl platters.

*As with all of my posts on this blog, I've linked the titles of the recordings to Amazon.com or other sources where you can get more info and purchase.

G.G. Allin - Doctrine of Mayhem (1990)

Side A:
Blood For You
Darkness And A Bottle To Hold
In This Room
Sluts In The City
Blood For You
Abuse Me (I Want To Die)

Side B:
I Wanna Fuck Myself
Needle Up My Cock
Assfuckin, Buttsuckin
You'll Never Tame Me
Bite It You Scum
I Wanna Piss On You


This is a collection, "Produced" by Dick Urine for Black & Blue Records. Contains some acoustic stuff, material from the original Cedar Street Sluts and material from the Scum Fucks.




G.G. Allin and the Texas Nazis - Boozing and Pranks (1988)

My copy doesn't have the sticker on the plain white sleeve. A basic blue label on the record with no track listing - just the title and label and copyright info on the A side and a big black swastika on the flipside. A friend bought this for me and got a really nasty look from the guy at the record store for purchasing it. Live stuff, this was originally a self released cassette, put out by G.G. himself in 1985.

Side A:
Hard Candy Cock
I'm Gonna Rape You
Teacher’s Pet
Eat My Diarrhea
Cock On The Loose

Side B:
I Wanna Fuck Myself
Needle Up My Cock
Abuse Myself, I Wanna Die
I Wanna Fuck Your Brains Out
Drink, Fight & Fuck
Scumfuc Tradition

(Personal Vinyl Collection) Aerosmith - The Toxic Twins and Co.

It's funny that the time to visit my Aerosmith discography is happening upon me now in the wake of watching the weird beauty that was Oprah Winfrey's "Next Chapter" Show on Oprah's OWN cable network. Let me just say that it is evident to me that Ms. Winfrey and Mr. Tyler are alien lifeforms but that this blog is not about the world of Oprah and Aerosmith as prime time TV celebrity "American Idols" - it is about these musty cardboard squares that contain these enrapturing circles of spiraling blackness that contain the sounds that have shaped my very soul.


Aerosmith - Get Your Wings (1974)

Side 1:
SAME OLD SONG AND DANCE
LORD OF THE THIGHS
SPACED
WOMAN OF THE WORLD

Side 2:
S.O.S. (TOO BAD)
TRAIN KEPT A ROLLIN'
SEASONS OF WITHER
PANDORA'S BOX

Aersomith is one of those bands who were floating around my childhood world. Being born to teen parents in 1973 has it's privileges, though the band wasn't one of my folks faves so I'd hear many of the songs on the radio without knowing anything about who it was. I heard the name of the band on the lips of the kids who were a bit younger than Mom and Dad - Aunts and Uncles and their friends - my own young friend's older siblings. Thank the Gods of Rock for RUN DMC and Motley Crue. This is how I really came to know Aerosmith. Because the kings of glam and sleaze rock placed the Toxic Twins and Company in their pantheon of influences and because of the fine folks at Def Jam were keen to pump their particular brand of NY Hip Hop full of 70's classic rock beats and riffs, I was a fan of the resurgence or "second flight" of Aerosmith in the 1980's. Not to say that I enjoyed any of the music they put out at that time. Oh sure, I'd watch those videos (Brandy Brandt - "Second Floor, Ladies Lingerie. Going... down?) - but the slick era of Aerosmith was less than exciting for me. With the purchase of "Toys In The Attic" on cassette and "Aerosmith's Greatest Hits" on vinyl and some donations from fantastic Aunts and Uncles, I was a fully immersed fan of the dark beauty that was 1970's Aerosmith.

A bunch of good songs on here. My favorite version of the logo - BAT WINGS! My personal favorite song is "Seasons of Wither".



Aerosmith - Rocks (1976)

Side One:

BACK IN THE SADDLE
LAST CHILD
RATS IN THE CELLAR
COMBINATION

Side Two:

SICK AS A DOG
NOBODY'S FAULT
GET THE LEAD OUT
LICK AND A PROMISE
HOME TONIGHT

This is my favorite Aerosmith record of all time. On the right day, I will say that it is "Toys In the Attic". On those days, I'm wrong. All of my favorite hair bands, sleaze bands, glam bands, punk rock n' roll bands, etc. have taken an ember from this fire to fuel their own blaze. Best moment on the album - the sucking sound and cowbell that separates the intro and main song in "Last Child".



Aerosmith - Live Bootleg (Gatefold Double LP, 1978)

Side One:

BACK IN THE SADDLE
SWEET EMOTION
LORD OF THE THIGHS
TOYS IN THE ATTIC

Side Two:

LAST CHILD
COME TOGETHER
WALK THIS WAY
SICK AS A DOG

Side Three:

DREAM ON
CHIP AWAY THE STONE
SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
MAMA KIN
S.O.S.

Side Four:

I AIN'T GOT YOU
MOTHER POPCORN
TRAIN KEPT A ROLLIN'


Okay, that stuff I said about that last album being my favorite? Rocks? Yeah, I meant it was my favorite STUDIO album by the band. THIS is my favorite collection from these polluted purveyors of Rolling Stones on 'roids Rock N' Roll. There's not a bum cut on this live collection. Story has it that they were terrible live at this time and that the record is heavily... polished in the studio, a la KISS "ALIVE", Cheap Trick's "Live at Budokan", Frampton's "Comes Alive" and yes, The Jackalopes "...a real, LIVE! Fuck Machine" but since those are all of the best live recordings ever released anywhere by anyone ever, then WHO GIVES A FUCK!? Firstly, it sounds pretty rough. Secondly, I'm not at the show! I'm listening to a record, probably smoking a left handed cigarette with a scarf over the lamp and thinking about how long my hair is getting. I happen to also be privy to the fact that Bowie is not from outer space (or is he?).

Aerosmith - Greatest Hits (1980)

Side One:

DREAM ON
SAME OLD SONG AND DANCE
SWEET EMOTION
WALK THIS WAY
LAST CHILD

Side Two:

BACK IN THE SADDLE
DRAW THE LINE
KINGS AND QUEENS
COME TOGETHER
REMEMBER (WALKING IN THE SAND)



Great songs. Classic, wrap around Aerosmith logo on red cover art. Kind of generic. This was probably released to recoup some of the money that the Toxic Twins had snorted or injected or to cover a debt to the record company. This was a Columbia House purchase and my copy is flimsy and cheap and with all the songs on other records and nothing special about the liner notes or artwork, it's a record that just plain never gets played. Hasn't been out of the sleeve in probably 25 years. Hey, at least it doesn't have Dude Looks Like a Lady or that Diane Warner song from that end of the world movie, or that one from that other movie, or that one from that other movie or that one other...

Really not a lot in my Aerosmith collection. A couple cassettes, a couple mostly unwatchable live videos... But these black circles are gold.