March 20, 2005

"I could wait 15 more minutes, alright, I'll wait forever" - Karl Hendricks Trio.

And the product keeps coming. Through the door last night with the weekend mail came the complete Wendyfix King Size Demos sent to me by Reader #6. Well, not quite complete: the excellent "Pillowhead" has gone missing from Reader #6's stash -- fortunately for you, you can watch the vido for the song with a reasonable amount of audio fidelity here. Fortunately for me I have a serviceable copy of the song on tape, and once I get my ripping situation straight I can rip that to my laptop -- today I got a good deal on a Creative Labs external soundcard from Amazon and once I get that straight you can expect more relics from the '80s and '90s to surface here. There are one or two other songs that aren't included on the Wendyfix disc, but I've already spoken about them in earlier posts. Snoop in the archives if you need more of that action. The audio quality of the King Size Demos as they are on this CD is noticably superior to what I had on my cassettes, particularly in the drums. Some other shortcomings of my cassette, such as the washy and incomplete beginning to "Microphones + Megaphones," are also eradicated. So hooray.

Karl Hendricks Trio's debut full-length "Buick Electra" was dropped on my desk with this morning's mail at the office. The version I received was not that which was originally released on Hendricks' own Peas Kor imprint, but rather the CD issued on Grass in 1994 [which has appended to it the "I Hate This Party" EP of 1991], some two years after it was recorded and released. I hadn't listened to this record for at least eight years at this point, but it still has its charms, and more than its share of great little rock numbers.

Truth be told, the late-model KHT of "The Jerks Win Again" [particularly songs like "The Summer of Warm Beer" and "The Overweight Lovers"] is markedly superior to this early stuff for a number of reasons. But I'll always have a soft spot for "Buick Electra," if only because it handily captured some angsty zeitgeist at an appropriate time. It is also, I think, the first record I ever bought from a touring indie act at a show. I bought this CD nice and cheap used online purely to hear the song "Stupidhead" again. Listening to it again I don't feel the song holds up as well as some of the other cuts on the record (including an energetic romp through the Rolling Stones' "She Was Hot.")

But in the summer of 1993 I made my first of several trips up to Princeton's Terrace Club to see Hendricks, and I will always remember a particularly snotty (Hendricks had pretty bad allergies that day, I think) but impassioned rendition of "Stupidhead" the trio performed that night on the club's back patio. [Hendricks also had a really neat guitar with a split metal headstock. Carrying on the split theme, he also had an A/B/Y patch cord that sent signals to two separate amps at either side of the stage, which I thought was pretty darn nifty. And loud. Gads.]

I saw KHT two more times before leaving the Philadelphia area for good in 1999, but I don't think I ever enjoyed them as much as that first night, despite the addition of a second guitarist at one point for more auditory girth, and some other sundry lineup changes. Anyway, here is "Stupidhead." Enjoy.

IndieWorkshop reports The Dresden Dolls record will get re-released at the end of April on Roadrunner, in time for them to promote it during their tour with Nine Inch Nails. Good on ye, Ms. Palmer.

Someone please tell Mr. Corgan or whomever controls the Smashing Pumpkins catalog that I am tired of fishing for a very cheap CD copy of "Gish" on Ebay and that I would be more than happy to pay retail (OK, maybe just slightly happy) for some sort of fancified album reissue. I imagine, barring any legal sparring that would preclude it, that SP reissues can't be too far back in some label pipeline. I wonder who owns/controls the Caroline catalog, anyway.

There is some discussion of my editing a blog component of Junkmedia. Nothing is finalized, but I would certainly enjoy writing for a wider audience on a daily basis. It could mean Clicky Clicky would suffer some, but it certainly wouldn't be replaced, as this site represents my voice and opinions, and the Junkmedia blog would be written to be representative of the publication. But just a heads up something exciting is being mulled over. If anything it could mean more review CDs coming through the door, something that always pleases me.

That is all.

3 comments:

Jay said...

Hey dawg,

Did you see that PitchDork went to a blog format for their news column yesterday? Except they call it "real-time." Geez, they should have just called it a "news end-to-end solution." Tools.

Unknown said...

Yeah, I did see that. Despite being posted in bits over the course of a day, they still don't seem to have more or better news. I think any experienced journalist could singlehandedly take on the Pitchforkmedia news operation and beat it. I wish someone would pay me to do it myself.

Jay said...

Yeah! Kick their asses! It was kinda funny to see that despite announcing this "real-time" news operation, they didn't post anything new for the rest of the day (as far as I could tell). They get the one-armed finger.