The Sour Grapes

A relatively long time ago, when I was in high school, I went to see Nicole Georges read from her zine, Invincible Summer, in the basement of Mac's Backs on Coventry. It was a pretty successful night out -- I thought Nicole was dynamic and funny and liked that she opened her reading by singing a song from Annie.

A couple of years later, I heard that Nicole was in a band called the Sour Grapes. I mail-ordered their CD, No More Drama for the Sour Grapes, and then I listened to it a lot. No, like, a lot. Like, all the time. I listened to No More Drama for the Sour Grapes so much that people around me started to hate it, which only led me to listen to it more, because how could anyone hate anything so catchy? The Sour Grapes write sassy pop songs with guitars, keyboards, & a lot of sincerity, which, if you haven't noticed, is something I'm really big on. Listening to No More Drama for the sour Grapes sounds a lot like friends having a conversation with each other -- you get the sense that very real emotions and experiences are being shared, even when the songs sound fluffy and lighthearted.

Aside from being astoundingly catchy, No More Drama for the Sour Grapes also taught me a lot of important lessons that helped me to survive my teen years in the zine scene.

Important Things I've Learned from the Sour Grapes

1. Yeah, it's cool to do things like make zines and ride bikes, but it is decidedly uncool to shame other people for not being as zine-y or as bike-y as you.
2. Don't let people make you feel bad for your supposedly "mainstream" interests.
3. There is nothing wrong with being a homebody.
4. 7"s are indeed going up in price and that is indeed a shame.
5. It's okay to call people out for doing something inappropriate, even if they are your friend or colleague.

The Sour Grapes have sadly disbanded, but you can get their album for just $5 from Tugboat Press, which also publishes Nicole's zine Invincible Summer as well as Clutch which is my favorite comic zine, even though it is more or less unrelated to the Sour Grapes aside from occasional appearances by Nicole.

You can sample the Sour Grapes on MySpace. I recommend listening to their track "Send My Valentine to the Burn Ward."

Fungi Girls

So, Drew and I have a sort of ridiculous set-up right now. He has a desktop computer that he hasn't bought a proper desk for and he also hasn't bought a wireless card, so he can't make much use of the internet at our place. So, whenever he wants to put music on his computer, he imports the CDs onto my laptop (that way all of the track names can be automatically looked up) and then puts it on a jump drive and then plugs the jump drive into his computer so that he could transfer the music onto it. Which seems like an awful lot of work to me, but anyway, sometimes he puts things on my computer and then doesn't delete them and I get snippy because I worry about running out of space on my hard drive and then I'll listen to whatever was left on the computer and end up liking it myself and leaving it there anyway.

Which is how I ended up listening to the Fungi Girls album 3 4 times at my desk this morning.

Before this morning I had never even heard of Fungi Girls, but some quick googling reveals that they recently released their debut album and it seems like they're already getting a lot of press on various music blogs because they're a bunch of youngsters. (Surprise! Kids in bands, you guys! How crazy!) They have a fuzzed out sound that's been drawing comparisons to groups like Vivian Girls and Wavves, plus their name seems to be a part of the larger trend of "bands whose names have the word girls in them," but seriously, they're good. Way better than any of the garage bands my pals were in when they were fourteen or fifteen.

But seriously -- their album is good and it's not good because they're young or because people are blogging about them or whatever. It's good because it has blistering guitars and soft, echoing vocals, and because it reminds you to that you too can do things!

You can order the Fungi Girls' debut LP Seafaring Pyramids from Play Pinball! Records. (BUY!)
You can sample the Fungi Girls on MySpace. (LISTEN!)

Bonfire Madigan Discography

So, last week I posted all of my Tattle Tale releases & this week I'm back with more! After Tattle Tale broke up, both Madigan and Jen continued to record on their own. Madigan released several EPs, 7"s, and albums, sometimes as just Madigan and sometimes as Bonfire Madigan (a full band line-up with rotating membership.)

This is a semi-complete discography, I've intentionally left off two releases, I Bleed: A Decade of Song and the Lady Saves 12", because you can still purchase these direct from Madigan on her website. I Bleed collects tracks from out of print releases & Lady Saves is Madigan's most recent release (you can hear the song streaming on her webpage.)

Madigan tours occasionally playing mostly west-coast and NYC dates. I've been lucky enough to see her live a couple of times and it's always an amazing experience. It sounds silly, but I really treasure the memories of post-show conversations with Madigan.

...From the Burnpile (Download) 01. Anthemic Amendments 02. Smoke Signals from the Burnpile 03. Snowfell Summer 04. For Live Long (Scars) 05. Backseat Buoy (Revisited) 06. Dishes and Spoons 07. Zamora, CA 08. Promised 09. Junebug 10. Tinkling on a Tightrope

Saddle the Bridge (Download) 01. Mad Skywriting 02. Where the Sky Below Meets the Sea Above 03. Running 04. To Find the Women in the Ocean 05. Awake 06. Scraps 07. The Debut and Debauchery of Anna Magdalena 08. Rachel's Song 09. Rachel's Song (Locational Variations On) 10. Onion Thin Cello Skin 11. Come Ask Her 12. 7 Mile Lane 13. Downtrodden Up

Plays for Change (Live) (Download) 01. Begin at the Beginning 02. Backseat Buoy 03. Slip 04. First Time 05. Onion Thin Cello Skin 06. Scraps 07. Mad Skywriting 08. Inch X Inch 09. No More War

88 EP (Download) 01. 88 Arbitrary Configurations 02. Tiger 03. Homefullness 04. Vigil 05. O'Sanity

Rock Stop EP (Download) 01. Pity Rock 02. Cornerstore Conspiracies 03. Middlenamed 04. Tick Talk 05. The Girl With Her Foot Behind Her Head (The Contortionist's Song)

Backseat Buoy 7" (Download) 1. Backseat Buoy 2. Batty's Wish 3. Begin at the Beginning

Mailorder Freaks 7" (Download) 01. Lesson in Ride 02. Invincible

Madigan Plays With Herself 7" (Download) 01. Curse of Superman 02. 2nd False Start

What I Bought

Mike Watt, "Tuff Gnarl" (Download)

Yesterday I picked up a used CD copy of Mike Watt's first solo album, Ball-Hog or Tugboat? and it is awesome.

Normally I don't really get records with that "so and so and all their friends" concept -- they seem weird and name drop-y to me, but Drew and I were listening to this in the car last night and reading the liner notes each track seriously became an event. After each song ended, Drew was like, "Who's playing on the next one!?" and each line-up was better than the previous track's.

The standout songs for me were "Against the 70's" and "Tuff Gnarl" (which Drew and I both think sounds like a song that a sort of proto-Los Campesinos! would have recorded.) I especially like Carla Bozulich's (The Geraldine Fibbers) vocals on "Tuff Gnarl" -- plus it has Petra Haden on the violin and J. Mascis on drums! (The more Watt stuff I listen to the more frustrated I am for not going to see him the last time he was in town.)

Last week I also picked up the new Dum Dum Girls single which was, as expected, great. I'm really looking forward to seeing Girls and Dum Dum Girls in Oberlin this April. You can hear the new single on the

I know that I've written about Tattle Tale on this blog before (read previous thoughts on Tattle Tale here)-- but I'm a girl of recurring themes. I'm going to write about certain bands and certain albums over and over again, there's just no getting around it.

Like a lot of people who spend too much time on the internet, I have a tumblr account, and while I have a love/hate relationship with tumblr in general, I do like that it occasionally serves as a platform for a particular kind of discourse that gives equal importance to visuals, words, and sounds -- so that on a day like today, I can answer a question from a friend about what my favorite albums are by writing about them, posting pictures of their covers, and sharing songs from them. Anyway, when I wrote about Sew True being one of my favorite albums, my friend replied with the thought, "I wish I could find a copy of that album for less than $100," which just seemed unbearably sad to me, even though it is a very realistic thought -- copies of Sew True are getting to be pretty rare (not that they were ever commonplace to begin with) and it's not unheard of for people to sell them for upwards of $100, which just breaks my heart because I love this album and I want everyone to be able to hear it, not just in that, "Hey, I downloaded this album on the internet and really like it" sort of way, but in the kind of way where they can hold it in their hands and say, "God, I love the linocut of the sewing machine on the inside of the album cover" and marvel at the liner notes and know that Madigan and Jen have some of the best handwriting ever.

It's stupid to say that the internet has changed music forever -- everyone already knows that. Nothing gets lost anymore -- it always finds a home somewhere, on a blog or a messageboard or a file sharing community, and that's ok, but sometimes I wish it was different. I got my first copy of Sew True in the mail from Hayley, a Bonfire Madigan superfan who put together a great (and sadly no longer existent) Tattle Tale fansite. I listened to that CD-R over and over again, so thankful for those songs and for Hayley's kindness in sending them to me, and I wish I could do that for everyone who's ever complained about downloading a cut-off mp3 of "A Girl's Toolbox." But I can't, so I'll put the files on a blog just like everyone else does.

It's not normally my policy to post full releases, but I also think it's totally wrong for people to sell these tapes and CDs and 7"s on eBay for 10 times their original cost -- so here it is, here is all of the Tattle Tale I have. I'm putting it out there for anyone who wants to hear it, who has missed out on it, who has no idea what I'm talking about, but is now curious, etc. Maybe it's absurd to quote Defiance, OH (but maybe not, since they're tenuously linked to Tattle Tale through Sherri Ozeki's time with Bonfire Madigan), but share what ya got, right?

So, if you already know, you already know, but if you don't: Tattle Tale was Jen Wood (violin) and Madigan Shive (cello), a teen girl duo with riot grrrl influences who left behind a small, but singularly raw and sincere body of work: one album, one demo tape, two 7"s, and a handful of songs released on compilation albums. Their music relies largely on the interplay between Madigan's cello and Jen's violin, and is occasionally added to by some spare drum and guitar parts. There is an intimacy to these songs, and a worldliness, and a quiet sort of anger that, I think, might be particular to teenage girls (but maybe I am wrong about that.)

So, here is what I'm giving you:

Early Daze 7" (Download) Released on Pillarbox Red Records in 1992. Features the songs "Running Too" and "Zachary's Mother."

Tell/Yell Demo (Download) A cassette only demo released by Kill Rock Stars in 1993.

Alder-Wood Mall/Loose Lips 7" (Download) Released on Chou-Chou in 1995.

Sew True (Download) Tattle Tale's only full-length release, put out by St. Francis records in 1995. Sew True features "Glass Vase Cello Case," which, thanks to its use in Jamie Babbit's But I'm A Cheerleader, is probably Tattle Tale's best known song.

"Fly Away" (Download) A track contributed to the Yo Yo Records comp, Julep (which can still be purchased on CD here).

"Girls Go To Heaven" (Download) Featured on the Yo Yo Records comp, Periscope.

"Erica" (Download) and "Take Ten (Download) Contributed to the compilation album Move Into the Villa Villakula. (I've uploaded the entire compilation album here).

TacocaT

TacocaT, Frenching and Foodstamps (Download)

I feel like I start off all of these blog entries with a statement about what a bummer day I'm having, which seems a little absurd and, sometimes, hyperbolic. So far today has been a pretty bummer day (I blame the seemingly endless barrage of snow that's been pounding down on the midwest lately, plus the general misery of a 9-5 desk job.) The first thing I listened to at work today was Jen Wood's This Uncontainable Light, which is great and beautiful, but also some seriously bummer music.

So, in an attempt to boost my mood, I decided to listen to TacocaT's tour EP, Frenching and Foodstamps. TacocaT cranks out 10 pop punk songs in less than 20 minutes on this now sold-out cassette EP. Side A is originals ("Baby Tooth," which reminds me a lot of Cub, with a slightly harder sound in some parts, is one of my favorites) & side B is like a tour of TacocaT's prime influences with covers of songs by the Replacements, Huggy Bear, Cub, Bikini Kill, and Beat Happening ("Knick Knack" is probably my favorite of the covers included on this tape, but maybe that's just because I love Beat Happening so much?)

TacocaT's full length, Shame Spiral, is available on LP and CD from Don't Stop Believin'. You can read a review of Shame Spiral on IndiePages.

TacocaT on MySpace
TacocaT on Highfives and Handshakes
Cover art for Frenching and Foodstamps

TacocaT, Frenching and Foodstamps (Download)

What I Bought

fIREHOSE, "Riddle of the Eighties" (Download)
fIREHOSE, "In My Mind" (Download)
Samson & the Philistines (Talk About the Passion)
J-Church, "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" (Download)

Yesterday Drew and I went in search of a birthday present for his dad and I picked up two used CDs along the way, fIREHOSE's fROMOHIO ($5) and Surprise Your Pig: A Tribute to REM ($4) featuring Band of Susan's, Jawbreaker, and a few other notable types. Plus, I got a Tattle Tale 7" in the mail today (the "Alder-Wood Mall"/"Loose Lips" one on Chou-Chou). (Speaking of Tattle Tale, I also pre-ordered Jen Wood's new album Finds You in Love, which finally got a physical release on New Grenada Records.)

Anyway, first things first. fIREHOSE. After reading Our Band Could Be Your Life, watching the fantastic Minutemen documentary, We Jam Econo, and spending a little too much time watching this YouTube video (taken from the aforementioned We Jam Econo) and (sometimes) crying, I became a pretty big Minutemen fan -- but I never really checked out anything that Mike Watt and George Hurley worked on after D. Boon's passing.

I knew that Watt and Hurley were in a post-Minutemen group called fIREHOSE, but had never heard any fIREHOSE songs. I spotted this CD while browsing through the used bin (where most of my CDs come from) and initially picked it up because I recognized the band name, but ended up buying it because it was called fROMOHIO and was recorded at Suma, a recording studio about 15 miles away from the house I grew up in.

Drew and I listened to about half of the album on the way home and then I listened to the full album this morning while eating breakfast and folding laundry. My favorite songs are the ones that sound vaguely country (you know, in that mid-to-late-eighties college radio sort of way.) "Riddle of the Eighties," "In My Mind," and "Time With You" are especially strong, I think. I really love listening to this and thinking about the band driving around Painesville, Ohio's semi-post-industrial, semi-country landscape.

I've uploaded the album's first two tracks, you can get your own copy direct from SST (CD $13, LP $9).

As you'd probably expect, Surprise You Pig is a mixed bag. A few tracks lend a hardcore perspective to REM, some are instrumental drone type things. I'm definitely not an REM purist, but I did notice that I seemed to prefer the songs that stuck a little closer to the originals in sound. Sam & the Philistines contributed a nice foreign language take on "Talk About The Passion" & I really liked J-Church's version of "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" (a song that I've always been particularly partial to.) Other highlights: Jawbreaker's version of "Pretty Persuasion", the Mr. T Experience's "Can't Get There from Here," the Punchline's "Bandwagon," and Vic Chestnutt's "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)."

fIREHOSE, "Riddle of the Eighties" (Download)
fIREHOSE, "In My Mind" (Download)
Samson & the Philistines (Talk About the Passion)
J-Church, "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" (Download)

10 for February

10 for the 10th (Download)

The tenth is my least favorite day of the month, mainly because it's the day that my student loan payment is withdrawn from my bank account (goodbye, $600!) Today's tenth is no exception -- it's been a glum day at work, the snow is piling up, and I don't even have the consolation of it being the weekend! I still have to make it through Thursday AND Friday.

So, I've decided that to commemorate the tenth, each month I'll post a mix of ten songs that I've been listening to recently in the hopes of keeping cheerful.

This month I have...

01. "Needle in the Camel's Eye" by Brian Eno -- Every now and then Drew and I revisit the topic of our favorite first songs on albums. He consistently cites Weezer's "My Name is Jonas," but I'm changing my mind all the time. Today's favorite first song on an album is "Needle in the Camel's Eye" by Brian Eno, the first track on the A side of his solo debut, Here Come the Warm Jets. This version is a low-quality rip from some low-quality vinyl, but I think the poor audio gives the song a certain warmth.

02. "Freedom Ride" by the Halo Benders -- One of the best things about my job is that my supervisor is kind enough to let me wear headphones at my desk. Today I sat around with headphones on and listened to all three Halo Benders albums while replying to e-mails and updating spreadsheets. Drew has a tendency to hate on Calvin Johnson, but I have a fondness for his baritone and while Drew can't seem to deal with Beat Happening, we can compromise on the Halo Benders. I love the way Johnson and Martsch (from Built to Spill) work together & this is one of my favorite Halo Benders songs.

03. "Wet Hair" by Japandroids -- I first heard Japandroids this summer. Drew played their album Post-Nothing while we were on a drive to pick up a bike that he had bought on Craiglist. I liked the first track ("The Boys are Leaving Town"), but didn't pay attention to the whole album. A few months later they performed "Wet Hair" on a late-night talk show and it's been stuck in my head ever since. This is definitely my favorite song with the words "bikini island" in it. I'm stoked to see them this April.

04. "Against the World and Losing the Battle" by Madeline Adams -- This is a great slow, mopey, winter song about lost friendships. Back in college, when I was feeling tremendously nostalgic and homesick, I put this on a mix for a friend that I used to be close to. It is probably the most cliche mix choice I could have made, but I don't regret it because it's a great song.

05. "Moulty" by the Barbarians -- Growing up, whenever I griped about my life my dad would make me listen to Moulty by the Barbarians. The true garage rock story of a boy who lost his arm and then found his way. I love old garage songs & I love pretty much any song with a talking part, so there's really no way that I could not not love this.

06. "LAKE" by Jack Turnbull -- I bought Jack Turnbull's CD-R at the Boston Zine Fest back when I was in high school. I honestly have no recollection of the other three songs on the CD-R, but have been obsessed with "LAKE"" for years now & it has one of my favorite lines in a song ever, about embracing the tenuous warmth & joy of a new season and "forgetting that we ever had to wear sweaters."

07. "A Stranger Broke My Finger But You Broke My Heart" by Sand Witches -- I wrote about Sand Witches yesterday, but thought I would stick this on here anyway because I seriously can't stop listening to it -- unbridled (post-)adolescent aggression and wariness and worldliness. My favorite line is "I've had my lisp for thirteen years, so I know what it's like to be afraid to talk" (paraphrased) -- which reminds me of myself in elementary school, sticking stickers onto my speech therapy folder and wishing that my mouth would just hurry up and work right.

08. "Twin Peaks" by Surfer Blood -- "Twin Peaks" is, sadly, not about the show Twin Peaks, but I love it anyway -- jangly guitars, a hint of that Vampire Weekend sound (just enough to draw a comparison, not to be annoying). Two summers ago Drew and I made it our mission to watch the entire Twin Peaks television series and all of David Lynch's movies. The quest is complete -- but I still get creeped out whenever I think of those late nights in front of the tv. The whole Surfer Blood album is great -- they should be touring soon & I can't wait to see them.

09. "Lights Out" by the Third Sex -- Ah, the Third Sex. My favorite semi-neglected Sleater-Kinney-esque girl rock trio. My friend Meadow put this on a mix CD for me when I was in high school -- I used to play this song over and over in a cheap discman with Hello Kitty drawn on it, rocking my head back and forth so that my hair fell in my face.

10. "This Town (No Vocals)" -- Drew recorded this a year or two ago & put it up on a MySpace page that I don't think he updates anymore. My college roommate and I listened to it incessantly on long country drives, the looping guitars making me think of home -- driving down Lost Nation Rd., past train tracks and old industrial complexes.

10 for the 10th (Download)

Sand Witches

My love for the lo-fi punk rock cassette is undying. I will buy them in the mail, I will beg them off friends, I will keep them forever in an overflowing basket of cassette tapes that I keep wedged next to my CDs.

MY latest favorite punk rock cassette comes via Sand Witches, a Bloomington, IN trio. Their 5-song cassette take Me Too Your Pizza Leader has been one of my favorite things to listen to. It may be just 5 songs, but at least 3 of those songs are great. (I especially like "A Stranger Broke MY Finger But You Broke My Heart," which reminds me of something that I just can't put my finger on.)

These are songs I would have loved as a teenager -- not that I don't love them as a twenty-something, but I think there's a particular kind of love and dedication you can give to music in your teen years. This is a tape that I would have wanted to listen to with my friend Brittany -- we listened to way too much punk rock made by macho white dudes & not enough made by our peers.

You can download the Sand Witches cassette for free from their last.fm page, or you can go here for information on how to get a physical copy of the tape.

A Kaia Wilson Primer

Kaia Wilson, 10 songs (Download)

So, I have had this post about Kaia sitting in draft form since December and just can't seem to finish it. I re-open it, make a few edits, leave it un-posted, and then forget about it until someone says something that reminds me of Kaia. Like today, when I came into work and Kate said, "So, Cleveland is hosting the Gay Games in 2014!" and my brain immediately jumped to, "Kaia is currently training to compete in the Gay Games in Cologne, Germany!" (You can view her ping-pong training videos on YouTube.) You would be surprised how often things seem to remind me of Kaia Wilson, unless of course you know me in real life, in which case you are probably subjected to my thoughts on Kaia Wilson on a semi-regular basis.

My original introduction for this post went something like this: So, yesterday I posted the Move Into the Villa Villakula comp, which got me thinking about Kaia Wilson (hah, like I am not always thinking about Kaia Wilson).

Which is more or less true. I do spend an awful lot of time thinking about Kaia Wilson. Or, at least, I spend a lot of time listening to her.

When I was looking for a picture to post with this entry, I stumbled upon a blog post on I Could Die Tomorrow that said something like, "Some people have swim coaches & other people have Kaia Wilson," which is a pretty succinct summary of my high school experience: no sports, but a whole lot of queercore. I got into Kaia my freshman or sophomore year of high school and maybe this is a little hyperbolic, but it felt like someone had thrown a life raft to me.

I feel like what I have to say about Kaia doesn't make a lot of sense. When I think about listening to Kaia, I think about being up late (too late), lying in my too-small twin bed and thinking about how much I didn't want to go to school, not tomorrow, not ever. I think about spending too much time with the wrong person. I think about the incidents of violence that regularly marked my adolescence. I think about difference -- how difference is defined, concealed, (eventually) embraced. I think about the simplest and most beautiful forms of expression.

Being under the covers, 14 years old, listening to Kaia sing about falling in love with Julie of the Wolves, and thinking about all of the things that seemed to be going wrong in my life was a strangely reassuring and cathartic experience.

So, I've put together a .zip file with 10 of my favorite Kaia songs, six from her solo albums, two from the Butchies' first album Are We Not Femme? and two Team Dresch tracks.

The songs in this folder are:

"Salamander" (from Kaia's self-titled solo debut)
"Statue" (from Kaia's self-titled solo debut)
"Freewheel" (from Team Dresch's Personal Best)
"Matter/Molecules/Thrills" (from Kaia's most recent solo album, Godmakesmonkeys)
"Disco" (from the Butchies' Are We Not Femme?)
"Off (Extended Dance Mix)" (from Kaia's solo album, Ladyman)
"Heartfelt" (from the Butchies' Are We Not Femme?)
"I Got You" (from Godmakesmonkeys)
"Where in the World is Greencastle, Indiana?" (from Ladyman)
"Hand Grenade" (from Team Dresch's Hand Grenade 7")

Kaia Wilson, 10 songs (Download)

What I Bought

"It's Love (Live)," The Softies (Download)

Friday is Drew's day off (normally he works until 9PM), so after work we head over to the Blue Arrow and Music Saves in Collinwood to do some record shopping. I don't usually buy much (I buy most of my records via mail order and I'm also usually too worried about saving to spend extra money on music), but every once in awhile I treat myself to something.

This weekend I picked up (on sale!) the Magic Marker comp, A House Full of Friends. The comp is a 2-CD set of Magic Marker artists and though the majority of the songs are previously released album tracks, it's nice to have them all in one place. Featured artists include: The Thermals, Dear Nora, Dressy Bessy, The All Girl Summer Fun Band, Dennis Driscoll, & a bunch of others.

The real winner on this is the last track on CD 2, a beautiful live version of "It's Love" by the Softies. (Drew would probably make a case for the Shins' cover of T-Rex's "Baby Boomerang" being the best track on here, but he's wrong. It's definitely Rose and Jen.) I listened to this track 5 or 6 times in a row in the car the other day & it's just wonderful. It makes me wish that I was in someone's living room somewhere listening to Rose Melberg play.

"It's Love (Live)," The Softies (Download)

Other purchases: a $2 used copy of The Old Record by the Dancehall Crashers & a $3 donation to P.S. Eliot for their cover of Hop Along's "Bruno is Orange." If you'd like to download the P.S. Eliot track, head over to their blog to make a donation.

The Parcels

Have a Go with the Parcels, The Parcels (Download)

Work has been miserable lately. The weather has been miserable lately. Everything has felt, to some small degree, miserable lately. It's not surprising that things might feel this way in the dead of winter. February is always the worst. (In this case, "the worst" may or may not be compounded by the fact that I can't afford to attend the fabulous Slumberland Records shows taking place on the west coast this March.)

The good news: such a bleak and seemingly endless time of year is the perfect opportunity to rediscover lost favorites. Have a Go with the Parcels is a gem of an album that I loved in high school & according to iTunes, haven't listened to since 2007 (my middle college years).

I found out about the Parcels through Light Rotation, a website that I used to scour for music reviews that also featured a database of Go Sailor and Heavenly lyrics that happened to be run by Parcels drummer AJ Naito. AJ still has a small webpage dedicated to the Parcels that you can view here, but aside from that, information about the band is a bit scarce.

So, today I've uploaded the band's now out of print full-length, Have a Go with the Parcels. It's roughly 25 minutes of cutesy pop about dinosaurs, witches, hippie girls and lobster kids. My favorite song on the album is, by far, the slightly (and by slightly I do mean slightly) more serious "Minor Disturbance Grrrl," a heartfelt response to riot grrrl that, at 14 years old, I totally connected with. (For those keeping score, I've name-dropped this song at least once before on this blog). To be honest, I'm still a bit bummed that the idea of minor disturbance grrrls never really caught on. I know that I still very much identify as one.

If "Minor Disturbance Grrrl" hasn't sold you on downloading this, maybe I should mention "Jessica Pancakes," an ode to a pancake loving girl set to the tune of "Windy" by the Association.

Fun Fact: The zine that I've published somewhat regularly for the last 7 or 8 years takes its name from a line in the Parcels' "Measure Me Sky."

Have a Go with the Parcels, The Parcels (Download)