aMINIATURE Depth Five Rate Six 1994

by request

 

Discogs

 

Rock band from San Diego, California which was active between 1990 and 1997.  

Tracklist

1		Physical Climber	3:58
2		No Bonds	3:33
3		Featurist	3:23
4		Weepo	3:08
5		Maestro	1:25
6		Ovisghian Zodahs In Panoply	2:43
7		Towner On The B-side	3:36
8		Foreign Room	2:59
9		Showdowned	4:35
10		Last Night At Sakura's	3:01
11		Zero In Trust	3:40
12		Hiker Atlas	4:36

 

I HATE THE 90s Volume 10

Thanks to Tom for making the cover

1. Sound Bite from Weird Science
2. SHIFT Dizzy
3. CHORE Trifler
4. HAMMERBOX Hed
5. URBAN DANCE SQUAD No Kid
6. CASTOR Pontiac
7. HOUSE OF FREAKS Rocking Chair
8. CRUNT Swine
9. IMPERIAL TEEN Water Boy
10.THE PRIMITIVES Earth Thing
11. TAR Time to Strike
12. SHADOWLAND Garden of Eden
13. HEAVY VEGETABLE Couch
14. LOCAL H No Problem
15. HONCHO OVERLOAD Gorgeous
16. THE PARACHUTE MEN Every Other Thursday
17. LUSTRE KING Asia Minor
18. BUTTERGLORY The Drums Were Lost
19. WHISKEYTOWN 16 Days
20. DOXIE Redpop
21. NO. 2 Critical Mass
22. DREAD ZEPPELIN The Song Remains the Same
23. THE CRAMPS Let's Get Fucked Up
24. BECK Satan Gave Me a Taco

BETTIE SERVEERT Bettie Serveert Plays Venus In Furs And Other Velvet Underground Songs 1998

by request

Recorded live on 11|27|1997 at the Paradiso, Amsterdam.

 

Discogs

 

Tracklist 

1		Beginning To See The Light
2		Stephanie Says
3		What Goes On
4		Venus In Furs
5		Sunday Morning
6		Black Angel's Death Song
7		I Can't Stand It
8		European Son
9		Rock 'N' Roll
10		Afterhours

THREE MILE PILOT self titled EP 1998

by request

Discogs

 

Tracklist

	Wahn
	Tokyo Static
	On A Ship To Bangladesh
	By This River
	Worry

Artist Biography by Steve Huey

San Diego's Three Mile Pilot are perhaps best known to the indie rock world at large for supplying key personnel to Touch & Go buzz band the Black Heart Procession. Still, they spent much of the '90s near the forefront of a surprisingly active local indie scene. Three Mile Pilot made their mark with distinctively moody, bass-centered arrangements (in fact, they started out with no guitar at all) and a prog rock aesthetic that often resulted in long, winding, multi-sectioned song structures. Their abrupt shifts in key, rhythm, and volume earned them comparisons to math rockers like Slint and Don Caballero, but their poppier moments were more akin to the Pixies or Nirvana. After several unique albums for local indie Headhunter, the band went on hiatus as its leaders focused on other projects.

Three Mile Pilot were formed in San Diego circa 1991 as a trio featuring vocalist Pall A. Jenkins (aka Paulo Zappoli), bassist Armistead Burwell Smith IV (aka Zach, aka ABS#4), and drummer Tom Zinser. At times, they were augmented by horn player Jim French. This lineup signed to Headhunter and issued its debut album, Na Vucca Do Lupu, in 1992. In its wake, Jenkins took up guitar, giving the instrument a dry run on the 1993 EP Circumcised. For the group's second album, 1994's The Chief Assassin to the Sinister, Smith contributed piano and cello, further broadening Three Mile Pilot's textural palette. The album caught the attention of major label Geffen, which reissued it in 1995 with several additional tracks. However, the band's tenure at Geffen was stormy and very short, and it soon returned to Headhunter.

Three Mile Pilot added a full-time pianist, Tobias Nathaniel, for the recording of their third album, Another Desert, Another Sea, released in 1997. A self-titled five-song EP followed on the Gravity label, as well as a series of 7" singles for assorted tiny indies. During this period, Jenkins and Nathaniel broke away to form the Nick Cave-influenced Black Heart Procession, who earned a deal with Touch & Go starting with their second record, and built an underground following that grew to eclipse Three Mile Pilot's. While both Jenkins and Nathaniel remained official members of Three Mile Pilot, the band went on hiatus indefinitely, during which time Smith and Zinser joined with San Diego native Rob Crow (Heavy Vegetable, Thingy, etc.) in the off-kilter indie pop band Pinback. In 2000, Headhunter released a double-CD compilation of Three Mile Pilot singles, outtakes, and rarities titled Songs From an Old Town We Once Knew. Although Three Mile Pilot continued to work on new material from time to time, the relative success (and touring commitments) of the bandmembers' alternate projects effectively precluded an end to the hiatus. Then, seemingly out of nowhere 13 years after Another Desert, Another Sea, Smith, Jenkins, and Zinser reunited to record a new studio album titled The Inevitable Past Is the Future Forgotten, which was released in the fall of 2010. 

PRISONSHAKE The Roaring Third 1993

by request

Discogs

 

Artist Biography by Greg Prato

 

Prisonshake's approach to rock can be loosely compared to Fugazi. Like Fugazi, the most important thing is the music, and they could not care less about record sales, videos, radio, or glamour. But unlike Fugazi, Prisonshake's record output has been limited to just a couple of full-length albums, plus a slew of singles and appearances on compilations, and they don't play live regularly. Admirably, they're writing music for their own enjoyment, and if other people like it as well, that's fine...and hardly necessary.

The group began back in 1987 and soon started touring and writing songs, amassing an abundance of material over the next six years (close to 100 songs). As 1992 wound down, most of the members quit to pursue other interests (in this case, it wasn't musical -- it had to do with changing professions to earn a steady income, and being able to provide for their families). But during 1993, the band's main songwriters, guitarist Robert Griffin (who also runs Scat Records) and singer Douglas Enkler regrouped. Prisonshake had never released a full-length album (just singles), and were curious to see what would come out of making a complete record with an outside producer (ex-Dictator Andrew Shernoff). The result was rock at its raunchiest, à la the Replacements, and the finished album was released under the title The Roaring Third on Scat. After a few U.S. tours with different musicians filling in for the departed original members, it all wound down due to unstable rhythm sections. The Prisonshake duo moved to St. Louis in 1994, where they continued writing songs and producing demos. The band followed up The Roaring Third with Failed to Menace in 1995, on the larger Matador label. Will Prisonshake ever release another record or play live again? Sure, if they feel like it.

Tracklist

1	Kick Up Yer Heels
2	Carthage Burns!
3	Hurry
4	2 Sisters
5	Precious
6	Cigarette Day
7	Quits
8	Always Almost There
9	Asiento
10	Irene
11	Seemed A Brilliant Idea

 

MAN WILL SURRENDER

Instrument

1994

Castrato

1995

Five on the Dime

1996

by request

Discogs


Instrument

Tracklist

1	Silent Pain
2	Another Point Of View
3	Immortality
4	Unknown Travel

Castrato

Tracklist

1	Castrato
2	Malpractice
3	Grey-Shade Lines

Five On The Dime EP

Tracklist

1	Final Stage Of Learning	3:53
2	A Matter Of Time	2:54
3	Self Defeating Purpose	3:38
4	You'll Never Know	3:33
5	Change	4:45

 

THE ALUMINUM GROUP Plano 1998

by request

 

Artist Biography by Jason Ankeny

Named in honor of a line of furniture designed by Charles and Ray Eames, the Chicago-based chamber-pop outfit the Aluminum Group was led by brothers John and Frank Navin, longtime staples of the Wicker Park music scene who first surfaced in 1983 as members of the hardcore band Women in Love. Always harboring a secret affecton for the music of the Carpenters and Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66, the Navins eventually formed the Aluminum Group, stubbornly pursuing their brand of lushly orchestrated pop until the sound actually became newly fashionable during the mid-1990s. Three years after self-releasing the lackluster Wonder Boy in 1995, the band -- also featuring guitarist John Ridenour, keyboardist Liz Conant, bassist Eddie Carlson and drummer John Blaha -- issued their superb sophomore LP Plano on local indie Minty Fresh. The Jim O'Rourke-produced Pedals followed in 1999; Pelo was issued a year later. 

ROB CROW Lactose Adept 1996

by request

 

Artist Biography by Stewart Mason

San Diego-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Rob Crow is an exceptionally prolific and eclectic musician who splits his time among a variety of projects, including Pinback, Thingy, Goblin Cock, Optiganally Yours, Alpha Males, Physics, and Snotnose, among others. Along the way, Crow has released a few solo CDs that are distinctly odd even for this quirky indie rock/math rock musician.
Crow began his public career as one-fourth of Heavy Vegetable, whose first EP, A Bunch of Stuff by Heavy Vegetable, came out in 1993. When that group split in 1995, Crow and Heavy Vegetable singer Elea Tenuta started a new band, Thingy, almost immediately. At the same time, Crow released his first solo project, half of a split CD with the art noise electronica artist Lesser. Crow's half of the disc consists of 25 ultra-short tracks, mostly instrumentals, including three tracks recorded with the side project Fantasy Mission Force. (Fantasy Mission Force released their own EP, Circus Atari, in 1997.)

Crow's first full solo album, Lactose Adept, came out in 1996. Even more fragmented than his half of the split CD with Lesser, Lactose Adept consists of 30 bizarre song fragments ranging from seven seconds to seven minutes, well over half of them coming in at under the two-minute mark. Crow's scribbled liner notes explain that the songs were recorded with a four-track cassette deck in the apartment next door to his and Tenuta's, on equipment belonging to Heavy Vegetable bassist Travis Nelson. There is no element of Lactose Adept that is not totally strange, from the music to the bizarre cover art featuring a hacked Ernest Shepard drawing stolen from a Winnie the Pooh book.

Crow followed his solo sojourn with the duo Optiganally Yours, a duo of Crow on vocals and Optigan (an inexpensive home keyboard instrument from the '60s that plays sounds stored on discs) player Pea Hix. The duo released two albums, 1997's Optigan-only Spotlight on Optiganally Yours and 2000's Optiganally Yours Presents Exclusively Talentmaker, an album built around the sounds of other obsolete home keyboard instruments. Three more Crow solo projects followed, 2003's My Room Is a Mess, 2007's Living Well, and the I Hate You Rob Crow EP. 

HEAVY VEGETABLE A Bunch of Stuff 7 inch 1993

by request

Seven inch was also pressed on white vinyl 

Discogs

 

Tracklist

	Love American Style
	Ooohhh...
	Doesn't Mean Shit
	St. Livingston

VELOCITY GIRL ¡Simpatico! 1994

by request

Discogs

Tracklist

1		Sorry Again	2:49
2		There's Only One Thing Left To Say	2:18
3		Tripping Wires	2:47
4		I Can't Stop Smiling	3:16
5		The All-Consumer	3:11
6		Drug Girls	3:36
7		Rubble	4:40
8		Labrador	3:23
9		Hey You, Get Off My Moon	2:49
10		Medio Core	1:54
11		What You Left Behind	2:38
12		Wake Up, I'm Leaving	1:18