Dinosaur (Jr.) / You're Living All Over Me (SST / 1987)

Boston's steady decline as a record town has been the source of no little consternation to the few left to be bothered, but every so often a dedicated digger can still find a gem. Armageddon Records, risen from the ashes of Cambridge's legendary, defunct Twisted Village, purveys a fine selection of punk, garage, and metal LPs, new and used all mixed together in the bins as regrettably has become the fashion. I haven't turned up much here over the years and find the new/used toggling annoying, so I was making a perfunctory flip through the new arrivals when I found myself staring at a great favorite: Dinosaur Jr.'s breakthrough classic, You're Living All Over Me.

I came to this band and this record late, sometime after college, having missed the 90s era, post-Lou Barlow version of the band and their excellent albums during the grunge years, though I do remember hearing a lot about Green Mind at the time. Fish to water with this record, right? Not one that needs to grow on you. It's impossible to deny YLAOM's insane melodicism, and the carefully layered guitar parts just barely discernible through the crap production that gives the record it's unique texture. This record seems both influenced by and kin to early Meat Puppets in the way it manages to feel simultaneously sludgy and bright, and perhaps also in how J. Mascis and Curt Kirkwood manage to turn their imperfect voices into remarkably successful instruments that feel of a piece with the music.

I'm burying the lede, but the coolest thing about this record is that it's a true first pressing from 1987, with the band's original non-Juniorized name on the jacket. The short story: after recording their first, self-titled record as Dinosaur, they put out YLAOM only to be instantly hit with legal action by now-forgotten "supergroup" (shouldn't a band have to produce some worthwhile music to earn this tag?) the Dinosaurs, prompting the name change on subsequent pressings of this LP. Seeing this without the Jr. made me pull a double-take, then grin like an idiot who's just found candy.

The second coolest thing about this record, or maybe the coolest depending on your perspective, is the SST catalog booklet that came inside, still in mint condition. Aside from being a kind of time machine back to the days when people spent real attention designing print ephemera, it also helps date this pressing doubly. Everything is available only on LP and cassette, excepting an insert page headed "Compact Disc-O-Rama," featuring SST's earliest CD offerings (unsurprisingly the biggest names on the roster). All in all, this is a hell of an item, a cornerstone of any punk/alt collection. Though I'll bet Green Mind is impossible to find on vinyl.

*Update* I just reread this post and think it sounds too bitchy about Armageddon, which is a very cool record store with a great deal of good stock and very friendly owners who assured me that I could return this record no problem if I encountered any trouble with it. As some of you know, there are many record stores I'd be happy to shit on for being poorly run, stocked, or organized, but Armageddon isn't one of them. Go buy something from them.

Beck / Mutations (Geffen / Bong Load, 1998)

Bong Load Records scored a major coup in 1992 when cofounders Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf independently discovered Beck Hansen at L.A. clubs and signed him to release the 12" of "Loser." A year later, though, the excitement generated by the single led to a bidding war, won by Geffen, for Beck's debut full length, which appeared two years later. For Bong Load, the consolation prize was twofold: Beck's contract with Geffen allowed him to release side projects on the label, and BL got to keep his vinyl issue, which hardly interested the majors this deep into the 90s.

Things went smoothly through Mellow Gold, but after the smashing critical and commercial success of Odelay vaulted Beck to the top tier of rock artists, Geffen got itchy. Beck had recorded an album with producer Nigel Godrich that he didn't intend as a proper follow-up to Odelay, but Geffen went ahead and released it anyway, prompting a round robin of mostly collegial lawsuits between them, Beck, and Bong Load that took a year or two to iron out.

That album was Mutations, and Bong Load's LP issue is an excellent specimen, both as listening experience and object. For starters, it's pressed on heavy vinyl, and well mastered. Even better, it includes a supercool bonus 7" with three tracks not included on the CD release. The packaging for the 7" is an accordion- folded insert that's essentially the liner notes and lyric sheet for the album proper. I'll let the photos speak for themselves, but the performances sound excellent, and I've come to think that closing track "Static" is one of Beck's underrated best.

This is just a cool record to own. I actually hadn't thought it was ever pressed, but lo and behold, it turned up on Jonny's list of Record Store Day wall gems and I fought my way through scrappy Williamsburg trust-funders to snag it just moments after the store opened. My short take on Beck is that he's the closest thing any subsequent generation has had to a Dylan, and I think his work from the 90s remains underappreciated. When you have a moment, go back and listen to this record; it's remarkable how it feels simultaneously constructed and spontaneous, loose but assured. This kind of risk-taking has long since gone out of fashion.

Björk / Debut (UK / One Little Indian / 1993)

Something must have been infectious about Björk's singles from 1993's Debut, "Crying" and "Human Behavior," because I could still recall the melodies having not heard either for a decade. Plus, the moment I saw this UK pressing of her first record at In Living Stereo, I knew it was part of what I'm calling Core Collection, or the canon of albums I know I have to have, no dithering, no dicking around.

What's funny is that despite owning this on CD as teenager, I'm not sure I ever listened to it all the way through. The singles were great, but I also fell hard for this album cover. Björk was around 27 years old when it was taken, and thank goodness that was then, and that she's not in publishing now. Anyway, I never bought any of her other records, and maybe never will, but I was happy to hear that those dance-y singles sound wonderful on this heavyweight vinyl pressing. The rest of the album is lovely as well; I'd venture to say I grew into it, because I can totally understand why the tracks where she sounds like a French chanteuse didn't quite appeal to my Hüsker Dü / Minutemen-loving fifteen-year-old self.

One thing I find terribly annoying is when record stores have big-dollar records but no listening stations. ILS is kind enough to play what you want to hear in the store, but it still hard (for me) to catch noise and crackle when the speakers aren't nearby and the music is loud. This record turned out to have some quiet tracks where the noise really distracts. In fact, I'm not sure I'll end up holding on to it. Still need to give it a few more listens. One point in its favor, though, is that this particular copy is part of a limited edition 5000-copy run to include a lavish 16-page booklet with lots of fancy pictures of Björk that make me feel fifteen again. All in all, it's a pretty classy object, and as we all know I'm a classy guy.

It's still a mystery to me just why, at the moment when loud, guitar-driven music had the greatest hold on my imagination, I fell so hard for Björk's very danceable tunes. But she must have been doing something right, because along with Radiohead and Beck, she's one of the only respectable mainstream "rock" artists to maintain popularity through the height of the gangsta-rap and nü-metal years. She must've been on the cover of Rolling Stone three times between '94 and '99. Although, to be fair, at some point during that era, Rolling Stone ceased to be any kind of useful barometer for mainstream popularity. It'd be like being on the cover of Maximumrocknroll anytime after 1989. Boy, did they hate it when Green Day blew up. Total free-association, but I recently heard "Time of Your Life" on the radio and I thought, "Wow, these guys really did sell out hard. Just not quite when everyone in the punk world thought they did." Reminds me that I need to add Dookie to the Core Collection list. This has been a useful post, indeed.

Matthew Sweet / Girlfriend (Zoo/Classic, 1991)

When I think about Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend, I think about Robert Quine. Eight years have passed since the guitarist took his own life after falling into a deep depression following the death of his wife Alice a few months earlier, but I find that his presence as a guitarist persists for me. I come back to his work frequently, especially his sides with Matthew Sweet on Girlfriend and Altered Beast, which to my (probably heretical) mind, represent the apotheosis of his playing. His soloing on "Girlfriend" might be the best known of this work, but give a listen to "Dinosaur Act" or "Superdeformed" from the No Alternative compilation record and you'll get a sense of just how explosive his technique can be, jagged and possessed, never quite tracing the lines of the rhythm, rather erupting from the speakers like a kind of primal scream.

Quine plays on about 2/3 of the tracks on Girlfriend (1991), which is by far Matthew Sweet's best record. Listening to his previous album, Earth, one can't help best suspect a kind of Faustian bargain at work, since though Earth is a pleasant record of decent tracks, Girlfriend is a remarkable leap forward in songwriting, performance, and recording. Sweet's achievement here is typically attributed to two things: the creative wellspring borne from the dissolution of his marriage while he was making the record, and the remarkable lineup of musicians who helped him record it. Along with Quine, Sweet also got fantastic guitar work out of Television's Richard Lloyd, as well as top-shelf backup from Ric Menck and Greg Leisz. Though he would work with these artists again, he never quite returned to the heights of Girlfriend, rather continuing to make records of varying quality while slowly putting on about a hundred pounds over the next two decades. When I saw Sweet play the album front to back at City Winery last year, his voice was virtually unchanged, but he no longer seemed a compelling narrator for the emotions on this record.

As far as the vinyl goes, without giving numbers I'll say that I've never spent more on a record than I did for this one. Judging by completed listings on eBay, there seem to be relatively few copies out there, but here's a nice bonus: Though Girlfriend was released by small independent label Zoo, now long out of business, Zoo apparently made a deal with high-quality reissue label Classic Records to press their vinyl. The results are apparent on Girlfriend, which has always sounded excellent on CD and sounds even better here, bright and punchy with excellent clarity. And the iconic cover photo of a young Tuesday Weld is even more entrancing at LP size.

Here's Sweet playing "Girlfriend" on the mercifully short-lived Dennis Miller Show with Quine on lead guitar:

Inaugural Post: Smashing Pumpkins / Siamese Dream (Virgin Records, 1993)

There won't be much to this blog, I promise. Time is short, good writing is hard, and the internet is full of temptations. But some of you have from time to time encouraged me to start a record collecting blog, and damn if I didn't suddenly think that was a great idea in a moment of utter procrastination. (Though, frankly, it's Friday night, 10.30pm, and unclear what I'm putting off doing. Living my life?)

What's really got me going is what I'm calling Project 90s, an attempt to track down the vinyl of some of my favorite records from my youth, from what some might call the grunge era. That said, not every record on the list is grunge, and certainly not all are from Seattle. Today's pickup is an original pressing on Virgin via Caroline Records of the Smashing Pumpkins' sophomore LP, Siamese Dream. A cute girl in my eighth grade drafting class (the teacher wore a toupee) made me a tape of this record and I listened to it a lot while staring at her adorable handwritten track listing. "Today" got the most radio play off this record, but it might be the worst song here. To my ear now, it plods too much. "Hummer" is the secret star, "Rocket" also great.

Pressing-wise this sounds decent. One frustrating aspect of this record is that it's a double LP pressed on purple-and-orange marble vinyl, which is just silly. Novelty wax makes the whole thing feel more packaged, more of a collector's item than a straight-up issue. And the format begs the question, is this really a record I want to flip three times? Only a handful of records draw a yes (Exile being the most obvious). Still, Howie Weinberg did the mastering at Masterdisc and it shows. This sounds as good as the CD, though perhaps not better, owing to the marble crap it's pressed on. Cool gatefold, pic below.

Jonny at Good Records dug this out of a recent 90s collection he picked up. He's promised further goodies from this trove but I'm not sure when he's putting them out, and I'm not sure how much more I want to drop this month on records. Major label vinyl from the 90s don't come cheap, after all. But if he's got some Soup Dragons albums, I might have to pawn my grandfather's watch. You understand, I'm sure.