POSTER CHILDREN New World Record 2000

By request

BLU BONES Sink

By request

 

 

POLLEN Crescent 1995

By request

MOVING TARGETS Take This Ride 1993

By request

biography

[+] by Bill Janovitz

Springing from the fertile grounds of Boston's parochial hardcore punk-rock scene, Moving Targets are a little-known but seminal link in a chain that joins hardcore and other early-'80s Boston music strains like collegiate art rock and folk-rock to '90s alternative rock. Forming in 1981 around the songwriting, blistering guitar work, and emotive vocals of Kenny Chambers, the original power trio included bassist/vocalist Pat Leonard and the strong-man drumming of Pat Brady. After a few years of trying to scrape together gigs in the competitive early-'80s Boston rock club scene, Moving Targets' first significant exposure came in 1984 via Bands That Could Be God (Conflict/Radiobeat), a record of various Massachusetts punk and post-punk bands compiled by Gerard Cosloy, the soon-to-be head of the Homestead and Matador record labels. The LP included three songs recorded with Lou Giordano, one of the founding producers of Boston's legendary Fort Apache studio. Giordano had worked with the influential Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü, who were clearly a major influence for the Targets. Working with Giordano, the band continued to record, eventually finishing a 15-song demo, which led to their signing to the Boston punk label Taang! (which is also responsible for unleashing Lemonheads and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones on the rock world). These demo songs form the basis of the band's explosive debut LP, Burning in Water, from 1986. The album is an essential piece of post-punk, combining the band's love of hardcore, '70s progressive rock, and classic rock. It openly showed the influences of seminal art-punk-rock group Mission of Burma -- a Boston band also capable of punk anthems -- as well as another Burma-influenced group, Hüsker Dü, who released their legendary LP New Day Rising the same year as Burning in Water. Moving Targets learned a great deal from the 1984 Hüsker Dü record Zen Arcade and seem to almost anticipate New Day Rising, latching onto many of the same ideas on Burning in Water: combining the urgent energy and aggression of punk with the understanding and reverence for more traditional forms of music. The Targets do not come off merely as imitators; they are eager students who have digested various influences and end up sounding like none of them specifically. Burning in Water is its own beast, moving punk-rock songcraft into another class. While akin to Hüsker Dü's output, the Targets possessed a distinctive and decidedly Boston flair. The LP announced the arrival of an influential band. Any mid-'80s underground rock & roll band in Massachusetts would have been affected by its release and the LP also resonated overseas, where the band toured to some success. Moving Targets were devastating in a live setting. The original lineup was the best and most magical. Chambers shredded the guitar and his vocal cords on highly crafted songs. Brady proved to be an untouchable drummer, fitting fills, rolls, and crashes into impossibly tight corners like a punk-rock Keith Moon or Neil Pert. Bassist/vocalist Leonard showed an unusual melodic sense on the bass, somehow managing to keep up with the incendiary performances of his partners, while never sounding hurried and rarely approaching the bass like a guitar, unlike some power-trio bass players. Alas, the volatile lineup was not meant to last, and was soon fractured. The disarray sidetracked the group and Chambers acted as a second guitarist for a few years with one of the first punk metal bands Bullet Lavolta. All the while, Chambers continued to write for Moving Targets. Bassist Chuck Freeman entered the fray as Leonard's replacement, the two sharing the workload for the band's follow-up LP, Brave New Noise, released in 1989. The CD version of the record includes Burning in Water, making the collection a slam-dunk for fans of intelligent melodic post-punk.

The sound of Fall is a bit more polished, textured, evenly paced, and varied than Burning in Water/Brave Noise, in other words: a somewhat predictable pattern for the band to follow. They parallel Hüsker Dü's development into pop-punk and folk-punk territory, shedding a bit of the more overt Burma influences and displaying some of the more mainstream hard rock guitar work that Chambers had practiced over the intervening years with Bullet Lavolta. But the changes are mostly welcome signs of growth and the songs are rewarding.

That trend continued with 1993's Take This Ride, though this time the lineup had been stripped down to just Chambers as the only remaining founding member. He rounded the group out with Jeff Goddard on bass and Jamie Van Bramer on drums, two members of Boston band Jones Very. The band was simply not the same, missing Brady's pummeling drums in particular. The group now resembled a Chambers solo project, and indeed he did release some solo recordings: Double Negative in 1990 on European label Cityslang (featuring Goddard); No Reaction, which was recorded in 1993 and released in 1994; and 1996's Sin Cigarros. He has been relatively quiet since. Goddard went on to play with the Lune and Karate. Leonard continued to play in local bands and Brady was, at last report, a firefighter.

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CATHERINE Hot Saki and Bedtime Stories 1996

Upped by Kevin

Discogs

Tracklist 

1	Whisper
2	It's Gonna Get Worse
3	Cotton Candy High
4	Milkshake
5	Four Leaf Clover
6	Vegas Glam
7	Punch Me Out
8	Make Me Smile
9	Blacklight
10	Don't Touch Me There
11	Sign Of The Cross
12	The Angels
13	Pink Floyd Poster
14	Good Luck Charm

FIG DISH When Shove Goes Back to Push 1997

 Upped by Kevin

Fig Dish was one of the many alternative groups swept up in the signing frenzy that took place in Chicago in the wake of the explosion of the grunge scene in the Northwest. Everyone was looking for the next Seattle, and Chicago was as good a city as any, with a roster that included Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins, and Urge Overkill. The band started in the early '90s when guitarists Blake Smith and Rick Ness left their respective bands and decided to play together. Adding drummer Andy Hamilton and bassist Mike Willison, they chose the name Fig Dish and began to release homemade singles of their Replacements-esque rock. The band decided to try an experiment, they sent demos to major label representatives with a note attached saying "Hey (fill in the blank): I caught these guys last weekend, and they were amazing. Check 'em out! Your pal, Steve." Many embarrassed label reps gave them a story about their friend "Steve" recommending the band, but finally an A&R man from Polydor discovered their singles on his own and offered them a spot on the label. The band recorded That's What Love Songs Often Do within three weeks of being signed, and the album was released in 1995 with several tours following. When the single "Seed" started to hit alternative rock radio, the band ran across a blizzard in Nebraska which destroyed their van and their gear. That night the band was recovering at the hotel when the shell-shocked Hamilton told them that he was leaving the band to study law. The band stepped back into the studio for When Shove Goes Back to Push the next year, but they were very unimpressed with their situation. The album was released with absolutely no promotion from Polydor, so the band decided to look for a new label. While searching, they decided to just kill the band and work on other projects. Willison and Smith started Caviar, while Rick Ness started a band under the simple moniker of Ness.

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TIMCO Gentleman Jim 1996

Upped by Erik

Tracklist ▼

	Louisiana	5:01
	Gone	3:38
	Fazoud's Lament	3:08
	Steal A Car	4:11
	447	3:30
	Adalox	4:54
	Marquis De Speed	3:26
	Cut-N-Shoot	2:52
	Sade	4:34
	Not For Me	7:00

ELEVEN Thunk 1995

Upped by El Diablo Con Queso.

Review

by Andy Hinds

Anyone who lumped Eleven in with the grunge glut of the early '90s simply wasn't paying attention. Although it's true that the trio's excellent self-titled album (actually their second) was mixed with the guitars loud and fuzzy, the musical sophistication that distinguishes Eleven -- including not only compositional prowess but sheer chops -- leaves most alternative bands in the dust. Led by the husband/wife duo of Alain Johannes (guitars and lead vocals) and Natasha Shneider (keyboards and lead vocals), their primary calling card is a pair of extraordinary voices, both of which are capable of raw intensity and soulful understatement. And, while Johanssens' formidable yet immediately distinctive six-string skills -- which employ a supersaturated, slippery legato and rich chord voicings -- is impressive, Shneider's instrumental duties -- which include not only providing the lush textural and chordal keyboard parts with her right hand, but also all of the basslines with her left, may be even more amazing. No-nonsense skinsman and former Red Hot Chili Pepper Jack Irons lays his grooves right in the pocket, giving the sometimes prog-influenced tunes a foursquare rock swagger. The band …  » Read more

MIDNIGHT OIL 20,000 Watt R.S.L. 1997

Biography

by Jason Ankeny

Australia's Midnight Oil brought a new sense of political and social immediacy to pop music: not only did incendiary hits like "Beds Are Burning" and "Blue Sky Mine" bring global attention to the plight of, respectively, aboriginal settlers and impoverished workers, but the group also put its money where its mouth was -- in addition to mounting benefit performances for groups like Greenpeace and Save the Whales, frontman Peter Garrett even ran for the Australian Senate on the Nuclear Disarmament Party ticket.

The band formed in Sydney in 1971 as Farm, and originally comprised guitarists Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey, drummer Rob Hirst, and bassist Andrew "Bear" James; Garrett, a law student known for his seven-foot-tall stature and shaven head, assumed vocal duties in 1975, and the group soon rechristened itself Midnight Oil. After months of sporadic gigs, they began making the rounds to area record companies; following a string of rejections, the group formed its own …  » Read more

MOVING TARGETS Fall 1991

 By request

Biography

by Bill Janovitz

Springing from the fertile grounds of Boston's parochial hardcore punk-rock scene, Moving Targets are a little-known but seminal link in a chain that joins hardcore and other early-'80s Boston music strains like collegiate art rock and folk-rock to '90s alternative rock.

Forming in 1981 around the songwriting, blistering guitar work, and emotive vocals of Kenny Chambers, the original power trio included bassist/vocalist Pat Leonard and the strong-man drumming of Pat Brady. After a few years of trying to scrape together gigs in the competitive early-'80s Boston rock club scene, Moving Targets' first significant exposure came in 1984 via Bands That Could Be God (Conflict/Radiobeat), a record of various Massachusetts punk and post-punk bands compiled by Gerard Cosloy, the soon-to-be head of the Homestead and Matador record labels. The LP included three songs recorded with Lou Giordano, one of the founding producers of Boston's legendary Fort Apache studio. Giordano had …  » Read more

Tracklist ▼

	Taang! Intro	1:55
	Only Life Of Fun	3:24
	Fumble	1:36
	Answer	2:41
	Can You Blame Me?	1:57
	Travel Music	4:04
	Away From Me	3:19
	No Soul	2:21
	Blind	1:56
	Once Upon A Time	3:24
	Overated	1:13
	Awesome Sky	3:02
	Fake It

RAILROAD JERK Bang the Drum 1995

   320 kbps

Tracklist ▼

	Bang The Drum
	Highway 80
	Why Don't We Do It In The Road
	Home = Hang
	All Down Hill
	In My Face (Pretty Flower)

RAILROAD JERK self titled 1990

Biography

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Railroad Jerk skewer blues, country, rock, and noise into a messy, bohemian post-punk celebration of roots rock. Formed in 1989 by guitarist/vocalist Marcellus Hall and bassist/vocalist Tony Lee in Trenton, NJ, the duo added drummer Jez Aspinall and guitarist Chris Muller by early 1990; the group recorded their self-titled debut for Matador Records in 1990. After its release, Aspinall left the band and was replaced by Steve Cercio; Muller was kicked out of the band and replaced by Alec Stephen. The quartet released their acclaimed second album, Raise the Plow, in 1993; after its release, Cercio left the band and was replaced by Dave Varenka. Railroad Jerk released its third album -- its most highly-praised yet -- in spring of 1995. Third Rail, the group's fourth album, also received positive reviews upon its fall 1996 release.

FONDLY self titled 1995

Excellent first release.
Upped by Shane. 

RAILROAD JERK We Understand EP 1993

By request

Biography

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Railroad Jerk skewer blues, country, rock, and noise into a messy, bohemian post-punk celebration of roots rock. Formed in 1989 by guitarist/vocalist Marcellus Hall and bassist/vocalist Tony Lee in Trenton, NJ, the duo added drummer Jez Aspinall and guitarist Chris Muller by early 1990; the group recorded their self-titled debut for Matador Records in 1990. After its release, Aspinall left the band and was replaced by Steve Cercio; Muller was kicked out of the band and replaced by Alec Stephen. The quartet released their acclaimed second album, Raise the Plow, in 1993; after its release, Cercio left the band and was replaced by Dave Varenka. Railroad Jerk released its third album -- its most highly-praised yet -- in spring of 1995. Third Rail, the group's fourth album, also received positive reviews upon its fall 1996 release.

POSTER CHILDREN DDD 2000

By request

Biography

by Heather Phares

Poster Children are a high-energy punk-pop band that formed in 1987 in Champaign, IL. Playing what they call "post wave" music, their three full-length releases illustrate why they have a die-hard cult following: their ability to write hard yet melodic songs and their do-it-yourself philosophy, which includes driving their own tour bus, creating all of their own artwork and T-shirt designs, and having their own record label. A longtime college favorite, Poster Children continue to gain fans with each hyperkinetic release, including 1990's Daisychain Reaction, 1993's Tool of the Man, 1997's RFTM, and 2000's DDD.

MAVIS PIGGOTT In a Dark Suit 1997

By request
Reupped January 2013

Biography

by Steve Huey

A hard-rocking, (mostly) female post-grunge band based in Seattle, Mavis Piggott never caught the attention of the public at large. Less abrasive than Hole or Babes in Toyland, less girlish than Veruca Salt, their music fell somewhere in between; it also met with general indifference from critics, who usually found it solid but lacking distinction. Guitarist/vocalist Meghan Adkins teamed up with drummer Nicole "Nicky" Thomas to found Mavis Piggott; Thomas had previously played with the all-female Dischord band the Fire Party before relocating from Washington, D.C., to the West Coast. Adding bassist John Wickhart, late of the recently defunct Hush Harbor, Mavis Piggott signed with Flydaddy and debuted with a 1995 EP called Late Bloom. Their first full-length album, You Can Be Low, arrived in 1996 and slipped largely under the radar. A second album, In a Dark Suit, followed in 1999 and received slightly more attention, but failed to win them a wider audience, and the group quietly faded …  » Read more

ARCHERS OF LOAF 7 inches

Vocal Shrapnel 7 inch

1996

Jive Kata 7 inch

1997

By request

Reupped November 2012

NEW SWEET BREATH Supersound Speedway 1995

By request

 

Biography

by Mike DaRonco

With an influential presence's of Superchunk and Butterglory to top their own maturity of noise ridden pop, Seattle's New Sweet Breath provided another step away from the grunge angst in which their hometown became famous for. Consisting of Graig Markel (vocals/Guitars), Nicholas Markel (bass), Christopher Hazel (drums) and Stephan Mollmann (guitars), New Sweet Breath's discography began in 1995 with their first album Supersound Speedway, before providing 1996 with a slew of releases. Including three seven-inch EPs and two splits with Sinkhole and Hefty, New Sweet Breath also provided that year with their second album Demolition Theater on Ringing Ear Records. Following an US tour and a signing with Big Top Records in 1997, their third full-length A Shotgun Down An Avalanche also came out that year.

 

GREEN MAGNET SCHOOL

1993

Review

by Nitsuh Abebe

Green Magnet School fit perfectly with much of Boston's heavy rock scene (and Sonic Bubblegum's releases in particular) -- the six-track Revisionist EP is a sludge of crushing guitars that seem equally likely to have been inspired by metal or indie and hardcore. Whatever the source, the band does a fairly good job with a sound that's in danger of seeming rather cliched -- some interesting constructions and brief excursions into pop and punk save Revisionist from banality and actually make it seem like a fairly good release.

1995

By request

ATIVIN Pills Vs Planes 1996

 

Biography

by Jonathan Cohen

Ativin formed in Bloomington, IN, in the winter of 1994 after Chris Carothers (guitar) and Rory Leitch (drums) met at Indiana University. Guitarist Dan Burton joined the group the following spring, cementing the band's loud instrumental rock sound. Steve Albini andCarl Saff recorded the band's debut EP, Pills vs. Planes, which was released in December 1996. The spring of 1997 saw the release of the Modern Gang Reader/Larkin single, the first of several releases for Secretly Canadian Records. The band worked with Andy Bryant at King Size on German Water, their debut album for Secretly Canadian, releasing it in March 1998. A return to Albini's Chicago studio, Electrical Audio, yielded the four-song EP Summing the Approach, which was released in the fall of 1998. Interiors followed after a wait of three years in early 2002. Continuing on in the same vein as Interiors, Ativin released Night Mute in early 2004.

COLE Idea of City 1998

Discogs

Tracklist

1	$2 Bettor
2	Tropic Of Cancer
3	Throw Out The Lungs
4	Pigeon
5	Means To Discover
6	Redress
7	Recidivism
8	The Coastal Plain
9	Bonus Track

ELEVEN PICTURES Superficial to the Core 1999

Thanks to Dsvvsd for the up!

Discogs

Tracklist

1	Work It Out
2	Weakdays
3	Primate Dancer
4	Nostromo (Hold On And Let Go)
5	Sham Fu
6	When I'm Gone
7	We're All
8	Green, That Is Yes
9	What This Beauty Holds
10	Fragile
11	Little Killer
12	Sometimes The Sun

PICASSO TRIGGER T'ain't EP 1994

Upped by El Diablo con Queso

Discogs
 

Biography

by John Bush

The North Carolina indie punk band Picasso Trigger was formed in 1989 by vocalist Kathy Poindexter, guitarist Lisa Cooper, and bassist Samuel Mintu. The trio used several drummers during the early '90s before finally settling on Johnny Williams. Picasso Trigger released several singles for local labels during the early '90s, and signed to Alias Records by 1993. The band's debut album, Fire in the Hole, appeared in early 1994 and was followed by an EP, T'Aint. One year later, Alias issued Bipolar Cowboy. 

Review

by Nitsuh Abebe

T'ain't is the step between the aggressive riff-rock of Picasso Trigger's Fire in the Hole! and the more focused, angular and low-fi LP Bipolar Cowboy -- on this six-track EP, the band drops some of the trashy Southern rock influences that hampered the former and develops the scratchy, more punk-oriented aggression of the latter. As an almost exact midpoint, T'ain't combines the appeals of both sounds, but doesn't completely live up to either. It is, however, a step in a very good direction, as Bipolar Cowboy comes across as a more worthwhile release than its predecessor. 

Tracklist

1	Lo-Fi Tennessee Mountain Angel	2:07
2	455	1:47
3	Infinite Belching Baby Boy	1:53
4	Red Headed Retard	2:00
5	Kiss Me Where It Counts	2:12
6	Anti'd	2:13

PULSARS self titled 1997

 Upped by Kevin C

Biography

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

The Pulsars are a Chicago-based electronic-pop duo led by dance producer/mixer David Trumfio; the group also features his brother Harry on drums. After releasing a number of indie records in the early '90s, the group signed to a major label in 1996, releasing the EP Submission to the Masters later that fall; their self-titled full length debut followed in 1997.

GRIVER self titled 1997

Canadian emo (I hate that word but can't think of a better way to describe it) - good emocore stuff. Check it out.

MILK Succeeding Receeding 1994

Thanks to Erik for the up!

Review

by Nitsuh Abebe

Succeeding/Receding chugs through its mildly forceful indie-rock structures with a surprising level of appeal; there's the occasional turn to bombast ("Moping,") but this is more of a constructive slant than simply an attempt to rock out. The album finds its center in ringing but off-center guitar constructions, with bass humming hookily beneath and a slightly spacy approach highlighting some of the more melodic tracks. This makes for a somehow very entertaining release -- a nearly great record for the indie-rock crowd.