Dr Rock's Dungeon

RECORD OF THE WEEK:Big Drill Car-Never ending endevour

2009-12-23T09:08:00.005+11:00

I was lucky enough to pick up this beautiful double LP a few months ago, Limited on colour vinyl to (i believe) 300. Big Drill Car was one of the best Southern Californian bands, to emerge from the punk scene in the late 80s-mid 90's. Releasing a handful of records on Cruz Records (an offshoot of Greg Ginns SST records) then moving to cargo/headhunter. With the look of longhaired surfer bums, they created the power pop punk sound that went on to spawn hundreds of bands in the 90's punk world. This record is not only a work of art to look at, its just as good to play! Side 1 starts with a few new tracks, recorded for this release which are worth the price alone. The rest of the sides is taken up with unreleased demos, comp tracks, 7" and split 7" tracks. Including some of my favourites the Split 7" with Chemical People, and the Nothin' at all 7". I'm pretty sure this double covers absolutely everything recorded by the band that never appeared on any LPs. This coloured vinyl version is long gone , being very ltd, though copies of the reg black double LP are available still, along with the cd version fron Boss Tuneage records.
www.bosstuneage.com

BLUE UNDERGROUND

2009-12-02T13:55:00.003+11:00

If like myself you are interested in low budget,Euroshock, genre and cult movies, you have no doubt heard of Blue Underground. B.U is a DVD company providing special editions of rare, long forgotten, and sometimes not even discovered genre classics. Along with bigger names such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Alan Clarke etc, Blue underground fills a large portion of the exploitation and horror market. The company was originally formed to produce documentaries for Anchor Bay (another fine DVD company) by William Lustig, during his time with A.B. William Lustig himself being a creator of such great movies as MANIAC, VIGILANTE, RELENTLESS, and MANIAC COP. Blue Underground separated from Anchor Bay, (also taking with it over time a large portion of Anchor Bay's catalogue) and continued as a sole company producing great editions of underground gems. A great deal of effort goes into all the releases, with attention to transferring the original prints digitally, and producing original documentary material to go along with it. I have been picking up their releases since they separated from Anchor Bay and have never been disappointed. I first came upon their name, while actually being a fan of Anchor Bay releases, originally. The emphasis is a lot on the Euro end of the market, with Italian Horror (B.U has attained most of the "classic" back catalog from Directors such as Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento etc) but also leans towards Euro crime, Giallo movies and the long forgotten Italian era of sword and sorcery from the 1980's. Other prolific directors have had their back catalogs released such as Alan Clarke, UK (Made in Britain,The Firm,Elephant (of which Gus Van Sant's version was based)) Larry Cohen , US (Q the winged serpent, Bone, God told me to) George Romero , US (The Crazies, Two evil eyes) etc etc. I havent so far come across any average Blue Underground Releases, and I can only see the company's output becoming better and better. Some of the releases I highly recommend picking up, if this is your thing, would be Dario Argento's The bird with the crystal Plummage 2 Disc set, Larry Cohen's Bone, Joseph Zito's The prowler, Lucio Fulci's Dont torture a duckling, Alan Clarke's The firm/Elephant (on 1 disc), and William Lustig's Maniac. Though you can't go wrong with anything you get your hands on from this top notch company
www.blue-underground.com

RECORD OF THE WEEK:Mike Hale-Lives like mine LP

2009-11-18T14:25:00.000+11:00

My Mike Hale LP finally arrived this week, and it's a work of art! I have been picking up records from VINYL COLLECTIVE and SUBURBAN HOME for a little while and i'm never disappointed. They made an amazing job of the AVAIL reissues. Anyway this 12" slice of heaven comes in beautiful packaging (art by Sten) and also is on amazing grey,purple swirl type heavyweight vinyl (see pics!) Its a joy just to look at, and it seems so many releases (and rereleases) are looking better and better these days on record. As per usual with many indie labels now, free downloads are included too.

I first became a fan of Mike Hale's music with the release of the first Gunmoll record, "anger management in four chords or less" (No Idea records). I really thought Mike's voice had real passion to it. I followed the other Gunmoll releases that came after (and highly recommended them to all!!) . Although I am yet to pick up any IN THE RED (Mike's more recent band) I'm pretty eager to (too much music out there!!) The music on "Lives like mine" is far more stripped down and crafted as opposed to Gunmoll, pretty much acoustic, which is a joy. I have always been a big fan of artists who vary catalogues of work, and for this reason this is why the LP stands out a lot to me. Mike's voice has a soulful feel and works well with the style of tracks produced on this great record. Also additional vocals are handled by Allyson Seconds (wife of Kevin!) and add textures to these golden songs. The packaging also represents the minimal arrangements of the tracks, with basic lyrics, and little info on the inner sleeve, which also adds to the excellent job done on this vinyl treat.

If you're looking for a new LP (or CD) of great heartfelt tunes, without being overly sentimental, and have soul I recommend to pick this up, and also grab all of Mike's GUNMOLL records while you at it, over at NO IDEA RECORDS.
sources:
www.myspace.com/mikehalemusic
www.suburbanhomerecords.com
www.noidearecords.com
www.vinylcollective.com

BODYJAR-Corner Hotel-12th Nov 2009

2009-11-18T13:47:00.000+11:00

Melbourne's punk exports BODYJAR have called it quits after a long and respected career. Since the 90's the band has continually rocked stages worldwide, and consistently kept their fanbase happy with quality album after album of their brand of solid melodic punk. From the earlier days of skater punk to the slick production of later albums, the band can go out in style and dignity, on the last current tour, dubbed "the end is now". The Corner Hotel was packed out for this Thursday night show, and obviously the local crowd was out with pride to support one the bands final shows. When the band landed on stage around 11pm, they obviously looked primed,fit and ready to rock on through a great set list. During a great set of career spanning tracks, the band were jovial, interacting with the audience, as if playing in a large garage of friends. The live favourites were played "glossy books" , "time to grow up" etc. Everyone was in good spirits, and the band were obviously loving the audience reaction, appearing grateful for all the support over the years. After close to an hour, the band took off but returned to the stage with ex-drummer Ross Hetherington, from the bands peak years, and player of this writers fave BODYJAR album "how it works". All in all a great send off to this successful band, who have plugged away year after year. Be sure to check out the new band of Cam Baines and Shane Wakker, COLA WARS : http://www.myspace.com/officialcolawars

noise LP's

2009-11-17T14:08:00.000+11:00

NOISE RECORDS

2009-11-17T13:48:00.000+11:00

I have never been to Germany, and don't have any desire to really, it just doesn't appeal to me. I do know one thing though, they know their heavy metal. One of the greatest exports in my opinion is the record label NOISE RECORDS. In their golden years in the 80's they had some of the best, and cutting edge heavy bands around, such as VOIVOD, CELTIC FROST, HELLOWEEN, RUNNING WILD, CORONER and on on. Growing up in the 1980's was a good time to discover new music. Being that from a reasonably young age is was drawn to music, i quickly made my route along the river of hard rock and heavy metal. After discovering some of the big name favourites like Van Halen, Iron Maiden and Kiss i dug further and discovered bands, and evolved to labels. One of my favourites which i discovered early was NOISE. All the bands seemed to stand alone, have their own sound, and be playing something a little different. Band's like VOIVOD were ahead of their time, mixing crazy jazz type structures with speed metal, and off kilter song structures. My first purchase was Helloween's "walls of jericho" album. I studied the classic sleeve for hours, and also found a host of other bands i had never heard of the inner sleeve, in the form of all the LP covers printed, and various cool t shirt designs. I longed to able to find the RAGE albums pictured. I wondered what DEATHROW sounded like as i studied the picture of their sleeve. The one's that appealed the most were the LP covers that obviously had the same artist or similar pictures, like TANKARD. Having grown up with not much money i picked up these records, over the course of a lot of time, but did get to see the visual side of it all, along with discovering a lot of the bands i had never heard in the form of the DOOMSDAY NEWS 2 VHS compilation, with classic videos from S.A.D.O , V2 , VOIVOD, KREATOR, aswell as the disappointing cut down version of HELLOWEEN's "halloween" (originally an epic on the Keeper of the seven keys part1 album). Some of the bands did well (HELLOWEEN,KREATOR) some found their audience and stayed around (RUNNING WILD) and some were massively underrated (CORONER). Heres a few pics from my collection of some cool stuff from the label.

Number 1.

2009-11-16T21:32:00.000+11:00

Just like the 1996 Manowar track of the same name, this is post "number 1"...I thought it was time to start this blog, to try be more creative, and have more of an outlet to discuss the things i find important. You may not find them important, but that's your own downfall. What could be more important than discussing the finer points of THRASHIN' (the CLASSIC 1986 Josh Brolin movie AKA Skate gang) or the career of Yaphet Kotto? (the actor not the band) I may feel the need to entertain your evening rambling about the Vinyl output of Journey, Survivor or the back catalogue of my favorite record labels like SST, Lookout! or German 80's metal label NOISE records. So, "you think you're tough?" Not until you have a conversation with me about collecting vintage rock patches. Then if you've had enough reading on here, you can go read some of the books I'll be talking about. After that come and join me here for an evening stroll down memory lane, to the world of vintage home video games. And yes it wont stop at that, not until we have contemplated some discussion on some of my favourite comic books, and professional wrestling stars...oh yes, their are no limitations when you fill your life with all this cool shit!!!