Besides Asides

At the time Main Source's debut album Breaking Atoms wasn't seen as the groundbreaking near flawless piece of hip-hop that it is today. Sadly, like many great acts the New York/Toronto group never managed to recapture the magic of that album due in part to MC/Producer Large Professor leaving the group in 1992. Many casual hip-hop fans might not recognize the name Main Source off the top of their heads but you will probably recognize their sound as Large Professor was one of the two main architects behind the production on Nas' undeniably classic Illmatic. Although, Large Professor left the group they had already started working on a follow-up to Breaking Atoms entitled The Science but it was never finished or released and Mikey D replaced Large Pro on the mic for the official follow-up which was shelved. So what I've collected here is all the non-LP material from Main Source while Large Pro was still in the group including songs that were intended for the unreleased The Science LP. Enjoy:

So it appears like some house keeping needed to be done, because I messed up a bunch of stuff during my last update that was supposed to fix problems around the blog. First of all the Leatherface b-side collection link is fixed with a dl link including all the material, and I fixed the broken links to the Bayonettes discography and Weakerthans b-sides collection as well. It also appeared I left a song or two off of the Weakerthans collection that I intended to put on but I guess couldn't find a good quality source for them at the time so I've included them in the re-up. I also removed several old posts from the archive from the very beginning of the blog before Pants started helping me and before I had figured out exactly what I wanted to do with the blog. I'll probably be re-posting some of the content again in a more uniform format.

In Weakerthans related ish I was going to post a Weakerthans bootleg that a friend of mine recorded from a set they played this year in the basement of a record shop that sounds amazing BUT my copy of the recording was full of skips so I couldn't. Hopefully, I'll be able to visit him in the next month or so and get a new copy made to share with you fine people. With school starting up I assume some slow down will commence in feature updates, distance makes the heart grow fonder or something.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions, feel free to drop them here or send me an email.

My favourite "era" of Toronto's ever controversial Fucked Up was probably around the time of their first LP, Hidden World, and it's associated singles. This BBC session was recorded in May of 2007 in support of that record and showcases three fantastic renditions of songs from that LP as well as the b-side "Black Hats". My personal favourite is this version of "Manqueller Man" as Ben Cook's fantastic backup vocals give this version a little extra "something", Ben would go on to join the band as a third guitarist and play on future studio recordings by the band. I've been sitting on this for a few years and it doesn't seem to have much internet presence,although I did find it on one blog but the quality doesn't appear to be as good as this version and it doesn't have the great artwork made for it :). Enjoy!:

I'm happy to bring to you a new "feature" of the blog called Get In Where You Fit In or GIWYFI as the kids are calling it. Essentially while coming up with content to post I found there was certain things that didn't really fall into the category of b-sides collection, live/radio/studio session bootleg or out-of-print album and that is where Get In Where You Fit In comes into play.

What I have for you today is a group of demos that Dear Landlord recorded prior to their excellent Dream Homes LP and even their early splits with Chinese Telephones and Off With Their Heads. A good chunk of these are demo versions of songs that would end up on Dream Homes and the their 7" stuff. The songs are essentially the same with the only difference being the recordings, there maybe some slight differences in the lyrics and playing but nothing significant enough for me to notice. I just that you might enjoy hearing some great songs in a different way. Here they are:

Today's post once again comes out of the Pacific Northwest, this time from Tacoma, Washington's Seaweed. Coming out of that region in the late 80's/early 90's with a Sub Pop connection, Seaweed was often lumped into the grunge movement but they aren't really a grunge band. I don't hear a great deal in common with Nirvana or Alice In Chains or Pearl Jam in their sound, their arrangements are less direct, they have a more clear debt to hardcore punk and a pop sensibility that differed greatly for those bands. I'd say Seaweed has more in common with DC post-hardcore and bay area bands like Fuel, Jawbreaker and Samiam.

Anyways, like many bands during the grunge explosion of the 90's, Seaweed was picked up by a major label. Their sole release for Hollywood Records was 1995's Spanaway. The rest of the band's catalog while fluctuating in and out of print is available for purchase today via iTunes, but Spanaway which (in this blogger's humble opinion) is their best release remains out of print in relative obscurity. So instead of forcing you to head down to your local used record shop to pick up a copy I thought I'd add it to the blog. If you like it, go out and pick up one of their Sub Pop albums or their Merge release. This is one of my favourite albums, so I really hope you enjoy it:

cub was an indie rock/punk band from Vancouver, British Columbia, and boy were they cute. I mean the term "cuddle core" was invented for them. They have a sound similar to Beat Happening or Go Sailor or Beatnik Termites. They are the kind of band with a huge discography but only a few major releases with the rest of it spread out amongst 7" and compilation albums. In 1997, a year after their demise they compiled a number of those miscellaneous songs into a collection called Mauler. If you are a cub fan you will find Mauler extremely disappointing in that it was extremely incomplete and it even included songs from their full-length releases. To add insult to injury Mauler eventually went out of print so these songs were once again doomed to a life of obscurity. So I've gone back and taken all the non-LP material from Mauler and done my best to go out and find all the other 7" and compilation songs the band recorded for Mauler Revisited. Sadly, I've been working on this collection for a few years and there is a few songs even I haven't been able to locate. They are their contribution to Lance Hahn of J Church's Honey Bear Record's Not Exactly Happy: A Tribute To The Smiths, "Maneaters" from the Green Light Go! compilation, and as well as "Eyes of a Stranger" from For Sher: A Tribute To The Valley Girl Soundtrack. I'm also missing a few tape releases that I'm not sure if they have exclusive songs or not. If anyone has any of these and they'd be kind enough to hook me up I'd appreciate it. Anyways for better or worse this is as definitive a collection as I could make.

Sorry for the late update.

In the fall of 2007, freshly reunited 90's pop punk/hardcore act Lifetime did a tour of Japan. Somewhere in there they played a short acoustic set in a record shop in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Someone filmed four of those songs, and I've ripped the audio from them in surprisingly good quality. It is a real treat to hear these classics and one new song re-arranged. I hope you enjoy this: