Be Prepared: "American Hardcore" Expanded Second Edition | 1st Nov.

We've written about the 2006 documentary film "American Hardore," and former D.C. hardcore show promoter Steven Blush's excellent book that was the foundation for the film, many, many times. We feel that the book is an incredibly important documentation of the American musical underground of the 1980s, and we learned volumes when we read the first edition (which frankly, is SO MUCH BETTER than the movie). And so we were thrilled to see that a second, expanded edition of Mr. Blush's book will be released by Feral House Nov. 1. This second edition includes interviews with 25 new subjects, more than 100 pieces of additional art, new band bios and augmented discographical information. All told the second edition is about 80 pages longer, meaning even if you have and love (as we do) the first edition, the second edition is no less crucial. Perhaps most exciting of all, Blush will do a few readings to promote the second edition in New England in early October; complete dates are listed below. You can read an excerpt from the book right here, which excerpt describes the Western Massachusetts hardcore scene and Dinosaur Jr. precursor act Deep Wound. The second edition is on sale now for $23 and you can order the thing from Feral House right here.

READINGS:
10.07 -- Portsmouth, NH -- Portsmouth Public Library (7PM)
10.08 -- Worcester, MA -- Worcester Public Library (3PM)
10.09 -- Portland, ME -- Portland Public Library

Today's Hotness: Lilys, Dinosaur Jr., Qui

>> Hot blog Built On A Weak Spot here examines Lilys' stellar 1992 debut In The Presence Of Nothing, and offers up a few MP3s to boot. The record is obscenely out-of-print, but there are used copies out there. In the comments to the post we advised interested parties to track down the Lilys' superlative and even more rare Tone Bender EP, the main selling point of which is the track "Eskimo." The track isn't available on CD anywhere else, so far as we know. We think we've posted "Eskimo" before, but for those of you who haven't heard it, here it is once again for a very limited time. The Tone Bender EP was released by Summershine but we are not sure which year -- likely 1993, but that's just a guess. Anyway, we wrote about the EP previously here. The excitingly rejuvenated Slumberland Records site is hosting MP3s of other tracks from the EP including "February 14th," which we've linked below as well.

Lilys -- "Eskimo" -- Tone Bender EP
Lilys -- "February 14th" -- February 14th b/w Threw A Day 7"
[right click and save as]
[buy Lilys records from Newbury Comics here]

>> Speaking of buying music, we are very excited about the Other Music digital store that is online here. Idolator breaks down the salient whys and wherefores here. Basically, the tracks are encoded at a very nice 320Kbps and retail for about $1.11 a piece. We already ran over to try to buy a digital version of Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2007, which we accidentally purchased on vinyl from Forced Exposure. Anyway, we were all set to punch in our credit card information at Other Music Digital when we glanced at the page URL and noticed the usual HTTP as opposed to the secure HTTPS. The site's FAQ states that it uses SSL to protect transactions, but we weren't about to give our credit card number without double checking. We wrote to the customer service address and we'll let you know if we learn anything interesting.

>> According to the industrious folks over at FreakScene.net, alternative rock behemoth Dinosaur Jr. is slated to perform on The Late Show With David Letterman on April 30. That happens to be the eve of the release of the band's fantastic new set Beyond, which we reviewed here. The FreakScene freakers also tracked down a clip of J Mascis performing on Norwegian television recently. It's a little tricky to access, and in fact we couldn't quite figure it out, but if you've got some time to kill, the details are in this thread.

>> Just a bit of a follow-up on our item from last night: we had no idea today would be the day that Qui news was going to break, but broke it did less than 24 hours after we mentioned them in the intro to yesterday's A Silver Mount Zion review. Anyway, Pitchfork reports here that the band has signed with Touch And Go and will issue the set Love's Miracle Sept. 11. Amazingly, the set will include a cover of Pink Floyd's epic "Echoes." Wild.

>> Pun Canoes just published a lengthy interview here with the filmmakers of the excellent documentary "American Hardcore," which we wrote about previously here and here and here. Worth sitting down and spending some time with, and if you haven't seen the documentary and are a fan of any sort of modern alternative music, well, you have to see this.