fifteen

114-121


Bastro - Diablo Guapo (Homestead) 1989


Bastro - Sing the Troubled Beast (Homestead) 1990

You could more or less look at Bastro as an "in between" group. A couple of years earlier in Louisville, KY was a bunch of scrappy teens who played blistering post-hardcore under the name Squirrel Bait. One of those kids, David Grubbs, was a bit older and when he moved to go to school in Chicago this was the new group he brought with him (including Clark Johnson, another Squirrel Bait alum). The last piece of the Bastro puzzle was the addition of drummer John McIntire who was already studying and living in Chicago. Diablo Guapo was a slightly more sophisticated version of Squirrel Bait's speed/style mix... while with Sing the Troubled Beast a new experimentalism, both in composition and instrumentation, opened up. The aggression and tension that defined the earlier band was still present, but Grubbs began working with forms of minimalism and repetition to create that tension. Meanwhile a few of the other ex-Squirrel Bait folks were working in Slint; Grubbs put Bastro to sleep and began Gastr Del Sol, a collaboration with Jim O'Rourke that also featured John McIntire... who in turn was working towards the beginnings of Tortoise. More on all of the above in coming months.
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Bauhaus - Mask (Beggar’s Banquet) 1981


Bauhaus - Sky’s Gone Out (Beggar’s Banquet) 1982


Bauhaus - Burning from the Inside (Beggar’s Banquet) 1983

Naming your group after a German art movement most famous for their furniture design might not be the cleverest thing to do... but it was the 80s. If you know these shadowy Englanders for anything at all it's probably for the Hallowe'en favourite, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," which ironically never appeared on any of their albums... only as a single. Because of that song and their black clothed visual presentation they often get lumped in the goth category of music genrification. In reality they are probably closer to glam, if anything... proving this with covers of Ziggy era David Bowie and post-hippie T.Rex. Instrumentally the group let the the bass and drums (David J and Kevin Haskins) propel songs with inverted funk/dub signatures while guitarist Daniel Ash's fragmented textures gave things a tense, disjointed feel... occasionally alleviated by prettier twelve string acoustics and other such stuff. Vocalist Peter Murphy cemented the whole goth label with his vampire-chic high cheekbone emaciation and Transylvanian tenor. There was a definite temptation to mock these guys... but if you got past that, the music they made was quite compelling. It was as off-kilter and more consistent than Bowie's best mid-70s output, and it offered a nice middle range for those who wanted a challenge in their listening... but weren't ready for the wigglier stuff like Brian Eno's solo albums (Eno was another Bauhaus cover subject). On a personal note... Burning on the Inside was among the first ten compact discs I bought after going digital.
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Bay - Alison Rae (A Noise Annoys) 1995

This is one of those weird random albums. I ordered it based on a three or four sentence description in release sheets from Cargo Records in Montreal not long after starting work at Backstreet. I was just getting into Elliott Smith's self-titled solo album and other such sad and quiet acoustic stuff... and Bay seemed to fit the bill. As it turned out... and this was something I didn't twig to until later... it was also my introduction to Aidan Moffat, later of Arab Strap (see earlier)... but since he was not a singer but a drummer in this outfit my prolonged ignorance of the fact is a little more understandable.
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Beachwood Sparks - Make the Cowboy Robots Cry (Sub Pop) 2002

I've always meant to go back and get one of these guys' full lengths... maybe it's not too late? Celebrated and criticized for their homage/appropriation of the country-folk-rock style popularized by Byrds, Flying Burrito Bros, Buffalo Springfield... on this e.p. they showed signs of branching out into a more modernistic world with help from Jimmy Tamborello of DNTEL and The Postal Service (before that group's first release). It unfortunately turned out to be their last release. Pleasant and catchy.
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Beastie Boys - Check Your Head (Capitol) 1992

OK. I may have mentioned this earlier... but I am in no way funky. We non-funky people cope with our unfunkiness by poking fun at casually funky people. People like, say... Ultimate Frisbee teams. I've found myself in situations where I've had to satiate these casually funky people... thus I eventually purchased this album by the Beastie Boys. Well... to tell the whole truth... it actually came into the store second hand and had some scuffing which made a couple of the later tracks unplayable, so I brought it home instead of throwing it out. It has proven to be a good tool of appeasement when asked for "funky" music by people for whom James Brown or Parliament is a little "challenging." There are definitely other albums in the collection that would fall under a sub-heading of "social play" albums... albums for specific situations or specific crowds. Now this is not to say I dislike this album... or the Beastie Boys... it's just that, well... you wouldn't bring an albino sunbathing, would you?